1,411 QI Facts To Knock You Sideways

Page 1, Position 0: "There are 1: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/environment/flora-fauna/Just-1411-tigers-in-India/articleshow/2777803.cms
Page 1, Position 2: The Greek for ‘left-handed’ also means ‘better’.: http://www.anythinglefthanded.co.uk/lh-info/left-handed-language.html
Page 1, Position 3: The ‘Heil Hitler’ salute is legal in Switzerland as long as it’s an expression of personal opinion.: http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/it-s-the-law--hitler-salute-is-not-always-a-crime/38682072
Page 1, Position 4: Qatar is the only country that begins with a Q and Iraq is the only country that ends with one.: http://www.un.org/en/members/
Page 2, Position 1: The letter Q was illegal in Turkey for 85 years.: http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2013/10/16/yasmine-seale/q-v-k/
Page 2, Position 2: Dildos are illegal in Texas.: http://www.dallascriminaldefenselawyerblog.com/2008/10/are-dildos-illegal-in-texas-ag.html
Page 2, Position 3: Snake charming is illegal in India.: http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/beaten-track/news-snake-charmer-gypsy-life-awesome-performer
Page 2, Position 4: In New Zealand, snakes of any kind are illegal.: http://www.biosecurity.govt.nz/media/07-09-11/snakes-dont-belong-in-nz
Page 3, Position 1: In the Second World War, the Allies had a plan to drop boxes of poisonous snakes on enemy troops.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/8701034/Revealed-sex-hormone-plan-to-feminise-Hitler.html
Page 3, Position 2: On D-Day, J. D. Salinger fought with six chapters of The Catcher in the Rye in his backpack.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/the-filter/10874340/10-things-you-didnt-know-about-the-D-Day-landings.html
Page 3, Position 3: Charles Darwin let his children use the original manuscript of On the Origin of Species as drawing paper.: http://www.openculture.com/2013/10/charles-darwins-son-doodles-on-the-origin-of-species.html
Page 3, Position 4: Charles Dickens’s family had a cat, seven dogs, two ravens, a canary called Dick and a pony called Newman Noggs.: http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/04/chekhovs-mongoose-the-literary-figures-with-the-weirdest-obsessions/275302/
Page 4, Position 1: Theodore Roosevelt had guinea pigs called Admiral Dewey, Bishop Doane, Dr Johnson, Father O’Grady and Fighting Bob Evans, and a small bear called Jonathan Edwards.: http://www.nps.gov/thrb/historyculture/the-roosevelt-pets.htm
Page 4, Position 2: Anton Chekhov had a pet mongoose.: http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/04/chekhovs-mongoose-the-literary-figures-with-the-weirdest-obsessions/275302/
Page 4, Position 3: In 1849, the Viceroy of Egypt gave London Zoo a hippo in exchange for a greyhound.: http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/pointsofview/themes/beginnings/hippo/
Page 4, Position 4: There are more plastic flamingos in the US than real flamingos.: http://www.nextnature.net/2008/05/plastic-flamingos-saved-from-extinction/
Page 5, Position 1: There are more statues of lions in the world than there are real lions.: http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2014/07/30/show-your-lion-pride-on-world-lion-day/
Page 5, Position 2: Two-thirds of the world’s polar bears live in Canada.: http://www.canadiangeographic.ca/magazine/dec12/polar_bears3.asp
Page 5, Position 3: When Canada held a competition to design its national flag, more than 10% of the entries featured a beaver.: http://mentalfloss.com/article/50022/11-rejected-canadian-flag-designs
Page 5, Position 4: The biggest dam built by beavers is twice as long as the Hoover Dam.: http://phys.org/news192356462.html
Page 6, Position 1: There is enough concrete in the Hoover Dam to build a road across the US from coast to coast.: http://magazine.nature.org/features/watered-down.xml
Page 6, Position 2: The first motor insurance policy issued by Lloyd’s of London described the car as a ‘ship navigating on land’.: http://www.lloyds.com/lloyds/about-us/history/innovation-and-unusual-risks/pioneers-of-travel
Page 6, Position 3: The first fatal car accident in the UK was caused by a driver going at 4 mph.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-10987606
Page 6, Position 4: 6% of drivers deliberately swerve to kill animals.: http://editorial.autos.msn.com/blogs/autosblogpost.aspx?post=834f6c81-3815-4856-8199-ce70f480fdd8
Page 7, Position 1: You are 20 times more likely to die in an accident at home than you are to win the National Lottery.: http://www.rospa.com/homesafety/adviceandinformation/general/facts-figures.aspx
Page 7, Position 2: In 2007, 210,000 Americans were injured by lawnmowers.: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080603091342.htm
Page 7, Position 3: The lawnmower is the most dangerous item in the garden. The second most dangerous is the flowerpot.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/basics/techniques/safety_prevent_accidents.shtml
Page 7, Position 4: When Edwin Beard Budding invented the lawnmower, he tested it at night so no one would think he was mad.: http://www.lawnmowerworld.co.uk
Page 8, Position 1: Using a petrol-driven lawnmower for one hour produces as much air pollution as a 100-mile car trip.: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=98532
Page 8, Position 2: It is illegal in Chicago for lawns to have weeds more than 10 inches tall.: http://www.epa.gov/greenacres/weedlaws/JMLR.html
Page 8, Position 3: Plants suffer from sexually transmitted diseases.: http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/2013/07/wildflowers-can-get-stds-and-this-app-wants-you-to-help-track-one
Page 8, Position 4: Orchids can get jet lag.: Chamovitz, Daniel, What a Plant Knows: A Field Guide to the Senses of Your Garden - and Beyond (Oneworld Publications, 1 May 2012), p.23
Page 9, Position 1: In Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, there is only one flower shop.: The Week, 9 Oct 2013
Page 9, Position 2: There is only one stop sign in the whole of Paris.: http://www.thelocal.fr/20121004/paris-only-has-one-stop-sign-police
Page 9, Position 3: The name sign of the town of Lost in Aberdeenshire is the only one in Britain that is welded to its pole.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/3720848.stm
Page 9, Position 4: Female strawberry poison frogs have only one way of choosing a male to mate with: which one is closest.: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3665588/
Page 10, Position 1: A male capuchin monkey will have sex with any female that throws a stone at him.: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0079535
Page 10, Position 2: In 2003, Morocco offered Iraq 2,000 monkeys to help them detonate mines.: http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Security-Industry/2003/03/24/Morocco-offers-US-monkeys-to-detonate-mine/UPI-14431048506179/
Page 10, Position 3: The Burmese sneezing monkey sneezes uncontrollably whenever it rains.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/cambridgeshire/hi/people_and_places/nature/newsid_9132000/9132410.stm
Page 10, Position 4: 5% of cats are allergic to humans.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/4763132/Pets-are-allergic-to-the-hand-that-feeds-them.html
Page 11, Position 1: Napoleon, Mussolini and Hitler were all scared of cats.: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2004/nov/06/weekend.justinehankins
Page 11, Position 2: If cats don’t encounter people by the time they’re 10 weeks old, they will always be scared of them.: http://www.appliedanimalbehaviour.com/article/0168-1591(95)00603-P/abstract
Page 11, Position 3: Human beings have as many brain cells in their stomachs as cats have in their brains.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-18779997
Page 11, Position 4: A cat’s brain can store 1,000 times more data than an iPad.: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/computers-vs-brains/
Page 12, Position 1: The human brain has the same percentage of fat as clotted cream.: http://www.joyofbaking.com/Cream.html"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20329590
Page 12, Position 2: Camel urine is as thick as syrup.: http://www.ksl.com/?nid=1012&sid=20657666
Page 12, Position 3: Whale milk has the consistency of toothpaste.: http://www.whalefacts.org/whale-milk/
Page 12, Position 4: Toothpaste is addictive for bears but toxic to dogs.: http://www.deseretnews.com/article/635158539/Yum-Utah-bear-likes-toothpaste.html?pg=all"http://www.aspca.org/pet-care/dog-care/ten-steps-your-dogs-dental-health
Page 13, Position 1: New-car smell is toxic to humans.: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/11/121119173754.htm"http://web.archive.org/web/20070804042143/http://www.csiro.au/files/mediaRelease/mr2001/newcars.htm
Page 13, Position 2: The human nose can recognise over 1,000,000,000,000 different smells.: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/mar/20/human-nose-detect-1-trillion-smells-odours
Page 13, Position 3: You can tell if a duck has bird flu by smelling its droppings.: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131016212439.htm
Page 13, Position 4: The smell of a man is as stressful to mice as a three-minute swim. The smell of women doesn’t bother them.: http://phys.org/news/2014-04-scent-mice-rats-stressed-male.html
Page 14, Position 1: Women have been awarded only four of the 406 George Crosses.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Cross
Page 14, Position 2: Until the First World War, offices for women had separate entrances and staircases, for reasons of ‘morality’.: Financial Times, 20 July 2013
Page 14, Position 3: Women weren’t allowed to serve on Royal Navy submarines until 2011.: http://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/News-and-Events/Latest-News/2011/December/08/111208-HW-Submarines-Females
Page 14, Position 4: Girls in the UK have been getting higher grades than boys at school and university for nearly a century.: http://time.com/81355/girls-beat-boys-in-every-subject-and-they-have-for-a-century/
Page 15, Position 1: Female students in China outperform men to such an extent that some universities have introduced a male quota.: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/08/world/asia/08iht-educlede08.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Page 15, Position 2: There are enough empty homes in China for everyone in the UK to have one each.: http://online.wsj.com/articles/more-than-1-in-5-homes-in-chinese-cities-are-empty-survey-says-1402484499
Page 15, Position 3: If they were countries, the Chinese provinces of Guangdong, Shandong, Henan, Sichuan and Jiangsu would be among the world’s 20 most populous.: http://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/08/a-surprising-map-of-the-world-shows-just-how-big-chinas-population-is/278691/
Page 15, Position 4: China gets a new skyscraper every five days.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/8562782/China-to-get-new-skyscraper-every-five-days-for-three-years.html
Page 16, Position 1: China is the world’s largest consumer of red wine.: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/chinese-overtake-french-as-top-red-wine-drinkers-9093682.html
Page 16, Position 2: More wine is drunk per head in Vatican City than any other country on Earth.: http://www.wineinstitute.org/files/2010_Per_Capita_Wine_Consumption_by_Country.pdf
Page 16, Position 3: The crew of the Marie Celeste left 1,700 barrels of alcohol behind them.: BBC History, Dec 2013
Page 16, Position 4: Between 1908 and 1965, Winston Churchill drank 42,000 bottles of champagne.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/the-filter/virals/10304107/top-viral-stories-and-funny-virals.html
Page 17, Position 1: By the time a glass of champagne goes flat, two million bubbles will have popped.: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-science-of-champagne-the-bubbling-wine-created-by-accident-20961157/
Page 17, Position 2: In Beijing, two million people live underground.: http://qz.com/75039/in-beijing-housing-is-so-expensive-that-migrant-workers-are-living-in-bomb-shelters/
Page 17, Position 3: In 1870, two million rabbits were killed every year in Australia, all descended from just 24 released in 1859.: http://www.montana.edu/kalinowski/BIOL103/Lectures/BIOE%20103%20-%2007%20-%20Population%20growth%20-%202014.pdf"http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2009/04/08/2538860.htm
Page 17, Position 4: The soil in your back garden is two million years old.: http://passel.unl.edu/pages/informationmodule.php?idinformationmodule=1130447038&topicorder=2&maxto=10
Page 18, Position 1: Oxford University was over 300 years old when the Aztec Empire was founded.: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1y5f2a/what_are_two_events_that_took_place_in_the_same/?limit=500
Page 18, Position 2: When Harvard University was founded, Galileo was still alive.: http://www.theguardian.com/education/2007/nov/06/research.highereducation
Page 18, Position 3: Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were born on the same day in 1809.: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-lincoln-and-darwin-shaped-the-modern-world-45447280/
Page 18, Position 4: In 1941, there were only 11 democracies in the world.: The Economist, 1 Mar 2014
Page 19, Position 1: When the Pyramids were built woolly mammoths still roamed the Earth.: http://www.heritagedaily.com/2013/11/mammoths-still-walked-the-earth-when-the-great-pyramids-were-being-built/100307
Page 19, Position 2: Sir Bruce Forsyth is four months older than sliced bread.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sliced_bread"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Forsyth
Page 19, Position 3: The Radio Times is 12 days older than Nicholas Parsons.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Times"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Parsons
Page 19, Position 4: Nobody knows how old the Grand Canyon is.: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24941-grand-canyon-is-a-sprightly-young-6millionyearold.html
Page 20, Position 1: From 1974 to 1976, Shirley Temple was US Ambassador to Ghana.: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/shirley-temple-iconic-child-star-dies-85
Page 20, Position 2: Shirley Temple always had exactly 56 curls in her hair.: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/shirley-temple-iconic-child-star-dies-85
Page 20, Position 3: An acersecomic is a person who has never had a haircut.: http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-ace1.htm
Page 20, Position 4: Wealthy ancient Egyptians slept with neck supports rather than pillows to preserve their hairstyles.: Brunner, Bernd, The art of lying down, (Melville House, 2013)
Page 21, Position 1: The average person in Coventry sleeps for 6 hours and 5 minutes a night.: The Week, 31 Aug 2013
Page 21, Position 2: Two-thirds of parents who sing their children to sleep prefer pop music to lullabies.: The Week, 16 Nov 2013
Page 21, Position 3: People in Britain who wake in the middle of the night are most likely to do it at 3.44 a.m.: New Scientist, 30 Nov 2013
Page 21, Position 4: One o’clock in the morning is the peak time for moth activity.: New Scientist, 30 Nov 2013
Page 22, Position 1: There are 2,500 species of moth in the UK but only 60 species of butterfly.: New Scientist, 7 Sep 2013
Page 22, Position 2: The greater wax moth can hear sounds that are more high-pitched than any known animal can make.: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23501-zoologger-the-moth-with-the-highestpitched-hearing.html
Page 22, Position 3: Humans speak more languages than there are species of mammal.: New Scientist, 11 Dec 2012
Page 22, Position 4: The more rivers an area has, the more languages will evolve there.: http://news.discovery.com/earth/rivers-and-mountains-directly-shape-languages-140414.htm
Page 23, Position 1: Esperanto is the only language with no irregular verbs.: http://leisureguy.wordpress.com/2011/03/23/15-facts-about-esperanto/
Page 23, Position 2: Black Americans and white Americans have different versions of American Sign Language.: http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/sign-language-that-african-americans-use-is-different-from-that-of-whites/2012/09/17/2e897628-bbe2-11e1-8867-ecf6cb7935ef_story_2.html
Page 23, Position 3: The sign for the female sex (ÿ) represents the hand mirror of the Roman goddess Venus.: http://www.suengsoc.com/international-womens-day-2013.html
Page 23, Position 4: The inventor of roller skates first demonstrated them by hurtling into a party while playing the violin and crashing into a huge mirror.: http://www.rollerskatingmuseum.com/homework.html
Page 24, Position 1: Police cars in Dubai can go at 267 mph.: http://www.networka.com/stories/34559/dubais-bugatti-veyron-is-worlds-fastest-police-car
Page 24, Position 2: A cheetah that sprints for more than 30 seconds can suffer brain damage.: http://extraordinary-animals.com/2013/11/11/animal-record-holder-fastest-land-animal/
Page 24, Position 3: Ladybirds can fly as fast as racehorses can run.: Sunday Telegraph, 16 Mar 2014
Page 24, Position 4: When threatened, a limpet can run away at a speed of two inches an hour.: http://www.pznow.co.uk/marine/limpets.html
Page 25, Position 1: The Chilean word achaplinarse means to run about in the style of Charlie Chaplin.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=UwVYtrmBIEYC&pg=PT18&lpg=PT18&dq=Achaplinarse&source=bl&ots=UbIzqjxgNI&sig=gfZIxHk2e9u9EoG_z_Wl2OXDJ9U&hl=en&sa=X&ei=DC1aU6v1LaOJ7Ab2g4CwBg&ved=0CF0Q6AEwBTgK#v=onepage&q=Achaplinarse&f=false
Page 25, Position 2: The Chilean word for plumber is gasfiter.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=bcoxAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA505&lpg=PA505&dq=The+Chilean+word+for+plumber+is+gasfiter.&source=bl&ots=hnIcA1IDwO&sig=RdZzuDxTbkqT_LrUjL9A263dEAA&hl=en&sa=X&ei=K6jsU_CcNIHZ0QWJj4CACg&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=The%20Chilean%20word%20for%20plumber%20is%20gasfiter.&f=false
Page 25, Position 3: Gavisti, the Sanskrit word for ‘war’, literally translates as ‘desire for more cows’.: http://www.academia.edu/6333330/Shastra_Sabdabodho_a_discussion_on_SANSKRIT_as_a_language_By_Prof._Aloke_Kumar_in_the_Seminar_at_the_University_of_Calcutta
Page 25, Position 4: Greece is the only country in the world whose name contains none of the letters in the word ‘Olympiads’.: http://www.state.gov/misc/list/
Page 26, Position 1: George Eyser, who won three golds, two silvers and a bronze at the 1904 Olympics, had a wooden leg.: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/08/how-a-guy-with-a-wooden-leg-won-6-olympic-medals/260988/
Page 26, Position 2: Olympic medal-winners live almost three years longer than the rest of us.: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/seriouslyscience/2014/01/30/want-live-three-years-longer-just-win-olympic-medal
Page 26, Position 3: Sports journalists were banned from the first modern Olympics as they were considered to be professional sportspeople.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=buIzAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA328&lpg=PA328&dq=%22PE+teachers%22+olympics+amateur&source=bl&ots=c5mNHfuAJv&sig=o7Uo6akDfHIO52oVfpntQ-Jr1VU&hl=en&sa=X&ei=2OdwU4q4Goa-OcCggJgO&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22PE%20teachers%22%20olympics%20amateur&f=false
Page 26, Position 4: Michael Phelps has won more Olympic golds than India, Nigeria, North Korea, Portugal, Taiwan and Thailand combined.: http://www.theguardian.com/sport/datablog/2012/aug/01/if-michael-phelps-were-a-country
Page 27, Position 1: Olympic swimmers routinely pee in the pool.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/swimming/9457088/Michael-Phelps-admits-we-do-pee-in-the-pool.html
Page 27, Position 2: In wine-tasting, a ‘cat-pee aroma’ is a compliment.: http://www.timatkin.com/corktalk?570
Page 27, Position 3: Tomcat urine smells like cheddar cheese.: http://blog.oup.com/2014/04/facts-you-never-knew-about-cheese/?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=oupblog#sthash.TjvlHjTu.dpuf
Page 27, Position 4: Cheese is the most shoplifted food in the UK.: http://news.sky.com/story/892259/cheese-is-most-stolen-food-item-says-report
Page 28, Position 1: Americans eat three times as much cheese as they did in 1970.: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/?p=3416#.UlU-uxYTNz8
Page 28, Position 2: Americans eat nine times more broccoli than they did in 1970.: http://www.agday.org/education/fun_facts.php
Page 28, Position 3: 1 in 8 Americans have worked at McDonald’s.: http://www.businessinsider.com/19-facts-about-mcdonalds-that-will-blow-your-mind-2012-4?op=1
Page 28, Position 4: 1 in 10 Americans think HTML is a sexually transmitted disease.: http://www.geekosystem.com/html-std/
Page 29, Position 1: In 2011, the United Nations declared that access to the Internet is a basic human right.: http://techland.time.com/2011/06/07/united-nations-report-declares-internet-access-a-human-right/
Page 29, Position 2: The original purpose of the United Nations was to win the Second World War.: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-united-nations-is-born
Page 29, Position 3: The name ‘United Nations’ was Franklin D. Roosevelt’s idea. He rushed to tell Winston Churchill, who was towelling himself stark naked in his bathroom.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=kzrFOhXDp5wC&pg=PA477&lpg=PA477&dq=roosevelt+churchill+%22united+nations%22+bathroom&source=bl&ots=qtLshzEOAO&sig=ZrmJa5_JwuNS_RVg05dVNKuXM1c&hl=en&sa=X&ei=EqrsU6zAKIOc0QWK44DgBA&ved=0CCoQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=roosevelt%20churchill%20%22united%20nations%22%20bathroom&f=false
Page 29, Position 4: When catering staff at the UN went on strike in 2003, $10,000 worth of food and silverware was stolen.: http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,449436,00.html
Page 30, Position 1: UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon celebrated his election by singing ‘Ban Ki-moon Is Coming to Town’ to the tune of ‘Santa Claus Is Coming to Town’.: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6adcc176-9617-11db-9976-0000779e2340.html
Page 30, Position 2: ‘Santa Claus Is Coming to Town’ was first sung in November 1934. By Christmas, it had sold 400,000 copies.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=3RSyiTfo3QIC&pg=PA45&dq=santa+claus+coming+to+town+400,000+copies&hl=en&sa=X&ei=_-kiVK3OFuHC7gb6nICQDA&ved=0CCUQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false
Page 30, Position 3: Every Christmas Day, 400,000 Britons go out to a shop to buy batteries.: The Guardian, 21 Dec 13
Page 30, Position 4: The waste produced at Christmas each year in Britain would fill 400,000 double-decker buses.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4122729.stm
Page 31, Position 1: Little Richard was a washer-up at a bus station.: http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/men-of-the-year/home/winners-2010/gq-men-of-the-year-2010-little-richard-legend/viewall
Page 31, Position 2: Edward Elgar was the bandmaster in a lunatic asylum.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hereford-worcester-26415111
Page 31, Position 3: Leo Fender couldn’t play the guitar.: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/204186/Leo-Fender
Page 31, Position 4: Rapper Ice-T’s real name is Tracy Lauren Marrow.: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001384/
Page 32, Position 1: Johnny Cash’s estate once refused permission for his hit ‘Ring of Fire’ to be used in a commercial for haemorrhoid cream.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/3498749.stm
Page 32, Position 2: The original advertisement to recruit band members for the Village People read: ‘Macho types wanted: must have moustache.’: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/disco-era-greats-the-village-people-set-record-straight/story-fnb64oi6-1226499595022
Page 32, Position 3: Coldplay used to be called Starfish.: http://www.virginmedia.com/music/features/coldplay-facts.php?page=1
Page 32, Position 4: Oasis are named after a leisure centre in Swindon.: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/diary/diary-liam-returns-to-the-oasis-2347709.html
Page 33, Position 1: There are more people living in mobile homes in the US than live in the whole of the Netherlands.: The Week 28 Sep 2013
Page 33, Position 2: According to Julius Caesar, the most civilised people in Britain lived in Kent.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantiaci
Page 33, Position 3: A 2011 opinion poll found that 51% of Britons want the reinstatement of the death penalty.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14402195
Page 33, Position 4: 20% of the world’s CCTV is in Britain.: http://www.politics.co.uk/news/2012/02/21/revealed-how-much-local-councils-spend-on-cctv
Page 34, Position 1: There are more CCTV cameras in the Shetland Islands than in San Francisco.: http://www.express.co.uk/expressyourself/215388/CCTV-Britain-Why-are-we-the-most-spied-on-country-in-the-world
Page 34, Position 2: The word ‘British’ is the most common word used by people in the UK searching the Internet for porn.: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/online/porn-trends-in-the-uk-pornhub-reveals-what-we-search-for-9045862.html
Page 34, Position 3: The annual awards ceremony of the UK porn industry is called the SHAFTAs.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_and_Hard_Adult_Film_and_Television_Awards
Page 34, Position 4: Until 1910, film studios didn’t credit actors in case they asked for more money.: https://movies.yahoo.com/news/mary-pickford-film-found-nh-barn-restored-060155625.html
Page 35, Position 1: 71% of Oscar-winners’ tears have been shed since 1995.: http://www.livescience.com/27359-tears-flow-academy-awards-speeches.html
Page 35, Position 2: Oscar Hammerstein II is the only Oscar ever to win an Oscar.: http://www.imdb.com/news/ni56657227/
Page 35, Position 3: Harvey Weinstein of Miramax has been thanked 12 times at the Oscars – once more than God.: http://www.livescience.com/27359-tears-flow-academy-awards-speeches.html
Page 35, Position 4: Nigeria is the world’s third-largest movie-producing country but has only eight cinemas.: http://www.economist.com/node/7226009"http://impakt.nl/archive/2012/blog-2012/nollywood-vs-the-world/
Page 36, Position 1: Luxembourg is the only country in the world ruled by a Grand Duke.: http://www.royalty.nu/Europe/Luxembourg.html
Page 36, Position 2: The appropriate response to ‘How are you?’ in Luxembourgish is ‘Tip-Top’.: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mt7luAXrmmw
Page 36, Position 3: The English word ‘squirrel’ is particularly difficult for Germans to pronounce.: http://www.livescience.com/18932-germans-squirrel.html
Page 36, Position 4: The most difficult tongue-twister in English is ‘pad kid poured curd pulled cod’.: http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/blog/2013/12/05/mit-tongue-twister-trickiest-to-say/
Page 37, Position 1: The giant palm salamander can stick its tongue out 50 times faster than you can blink.: http://www.livescience.com/1330-world-explosive-tongue.html
Page 37, Position 2: The eyes of a giant squid are the size of basketballs.: http://www.npr.org/2012/03/15/148694025/just-how-big-are-the-eyes-of-a-giant-squid
Page 37, Position 3: 90% of all jellyfish are smaller than a human thumbnail.: http://www.discoverwildlife.com/animals/8-things-you-didnt-know-about-jellyfish
Page 37, Position 4: Jellyfish born on the Columbia space shuttle suffered from vertigo when they returned to Earth.: http://www.popsci.com/article/technology/space-born-jellyfish-hate-life-earth
Page 38, Position 1: The idea that sitting too close to the TV is bad for your eyes was started by a lamp manufacturer.: Dickson, Paul, and Goulden, Joseph, Myth-informed (Perigee, 1993)
Page 38, Position 2: René Descartes had a fetish for cross-eyed women.: http://www.britannica.com/shakespeare/article-43355
Page 38, Position 3: Reindeer have golden eyes in summer and blue eyes in winter.: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/10/29/why-are-reindeer-eyes-golden-in-summer-but-blue-in-winter/
Page 38, Position 4: Rats get more depressed in summer than in winter.: http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/pressrelease/longer_days_bring_winter_bluesfor_rats_not_humans
Page 39, Position 1: The smell of freshly cut grass is a plant distress call.: http://www.livescience.com/22241-sensor-could-detect-plant-distress-signals.html
Page 39, Position 2: In 2012, the fifth-oldest tree in the world was burned down by a crystal-meth addict.: http://blogs.ajc.com/news-to-me/2012/02/29/meth-user-burns-5th-oldest-tree-in-the-world/
Page 39, Position 3: The second episode of the The Muppets was called ‘Sex and Violence’.: http://blogs.indiewire.com/spout/guest-post-10-unknown-facts-about-the-muppets
Page 39, Position 4: In some parts of Germany, it is illegal to show The Life of Brian on Good Friday.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-23227452
Page 40, Position 1: The first Academy Award for Best Picture in 1927 featured an all-male kiss.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wings_(1927_film)
Page 40, Position 2: Sexmoan, a small fishing town in the Philippines, changed its name in 1991 to Sasmuan.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sasmuan
Page 40, Position 3: The Lego company was originally called Billund Maskinsnedkeri.: Smithsonian magazine, May 2013
Page 40, Position 4: By 2019, there will be more Lego figures on Earth than people.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financevideo/10622362/How-Lego-built-more-Lego-people-than-real-people-on-earth.html
Page 41, Position 1: There are more than 915,000,000 ways to combine six standard Lego bricks.: http://www.math.ku.dk/~eilers/LIFE5UK.pdf
Page 41, Position 2: There are about 294,000,000,000,000 leaves in the world; for every leaf there are 340 ants.: http://everything2.com/title/Number+of+Ants+in+the+world+vs.+Number+of+Leaves
Page 41, Position 3: If you feed silkworms mulberry leaves sprayed with pink fabric dye, they make pink silk.: http://www.popsci.com.au/science/scientists-color-silk-by-feeding-silkworms-fabric-dyes,380567
Page 41, Position 4: Until the 19th century, champagne was pink and had no bubbles.: http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2014/01/9-word-facts-champagne
Page 42, Position 1: UK house spiders include the Pink Prowler, the Spitting Spider and the Missing Sector Orb Weaver.: http://wiki.britishspiders.org.uk/index.php5?title=Spiders_in_the_House
Page 42, Position 2: 95% of the spiders in your house have never been outside.: http://www.burkemuseum.org/spidermyth/myths/comein.html
Page 42, Position 3: The daddy-long-legs flosses after meals by pulling each of its eight legs through its jaws.: http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/kids/animals-pets-kids/bugs-kids/spider-daddylonglegs-kids/
Page 42, Position 4: Frogs’ legs were eaten in Britain for 7,000 years before they were eaten in France.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-24522240
Page 43, Position 1: French toast is thousands of years older than France.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_toast
Page 43, Position 2: Lake Baikal in Russia is a thousand times older than any other lake on Earth.: http://www.theguardian.com/travel/2009/dec/13/siberia-baikal-mike-carter-travel-russia?page=3
Page 43, Position 3: If the rest of the planet’s fresh water disappeared, there would be enough left in Lake Baikal to supply humanity for 50 years.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10392527/John-F-Kennedys-missing-brain-may-have-been-taken-by-younger-brother-claims-new-book.html
Page 43, Position 4: Modern humans evolved 80,000 years after javelins were invented.: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/11/131126-oldest-javelins-stone-weapons-projectiles-human-evolution-science/
Page 44, Position 1: Anne Boleyn was the only British monarch beheaded with a sword.: http://www.capitalpunishmentuk.org/behead.html
Page 44, Position 2: The three Russian cosmonauts whose spacecraft depressurised just before re-entry in 1971 are the only human beings to have died outside the Earth’s atmosphere.: http://www.space.com/23182-gravity-film-worst-space-disasters.html
Page 44, Position 3: In space you can cry but your tears won’t fall, they just puddle up under your eye.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/9988194/Astronaut-shows-what-happens-to-tears-in-space.html
Page 44, Position 4: If all the salt in the oceans were spread evenly over the land, it would be 500 feet deep.: http://www.savethesea.org/STS%20ocean_facts.htm
Page 45, Position 1: Eels can live inside sharks’ hearts.: http://deepseanews.com/2013/10/ill-see-your-horrifying-crab-barnacle-and-raise-you-a-heart-eel/
Page 45, Position 2: Whales’ vaginas can be large enough to walk through.: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2014/06/11/getting-to-know-whale-vaginas-in-seven-steps/
Page 45, Position 3: Grey whales always mate in a threesome: two males to one female.: http://www.marinebio.net/marinescience/05nekton/GWlagoons.htm
Page 45, Position 4: Male squirrels can perform fellatio on themselves.: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2010/09/28/squirrels-masturbate-to-avoid-sexually-transmitted-infections/
Page 46, Position 1: The Empress Josephine had a pet orang-utan that joined her for dinner dressed in a white cotton blouse.: http://www.apsmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/APS-OPS-Ch03-Chevallier-Preprint.pdf
Page 46, Position 2: A salamander can have its brain removed, cut into slices, shuffled, minced, put back in again and still function as normal.: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.129.2330&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Page 46, Position 3: As soon as they find a rock to anchor themselves to, young sea squirts eat their own brains.: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/choke/201207/how-humans-learn-lessons-the-sea-squirt
Page 46, Position 4: Two-thirds of an octopus’s brain is in its limbs.: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/ten-curious-facts-about-octopuses-7625828/?no-ist
Page 47, Position 1: A stressed or sick octopus will sometimes bite its own limbs off.: http://www.tonmo.com/community/pages/octopus-suicide/
Page 47, Position 2: The world record holder of the longest accurate archery shot has no arms.: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/913412-matt-stutzman-shatters-world-arching-record-despite-being-born-without-arms
Page 47, Position 3: In 1986, Michael Foot’s appointment as chair of a disarmament committee prompted The Times headline: ‘Foot Heads Arms Body’.: http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2010/mar/05/footnotes-life-michael-foot
Page 47, Position 4: The body of the sea otter has a pouch across the front where it keeps rocks to break open shellfish.: http://oceantoday.noaa.gov/seaottersanatomy/
Page 48, Position 1: Louis XIV’s favourite seasoning was soy sauce.: http://www.shinzen.nl/kikkoman.htm
Page 48, Position 2: The volume of soy sauce brewed in the Netherlands each year is greater than that of all the gold mined in human history.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=-M5t2nXIXi4C&pg=PA2322&lpg=PA2322&dq=soy+sauce+netherlands&source=bl&ots=7IsdUdlopd&sig=aRyRGxhVaXYQR17pWA9O27YLUjA&hl=en&sa=X&ei=OfciVOihAbXGsQTO6oDwCQ&ved=0CGAQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=soy%20sauce%20netherlands&f=false
Page 48, Position 3: In 2011, Australia minted a giant ‘A$1 million’ gold coin. It weighed over a ton and used gold worth A$52 million.: http://www.coinweek.com/world-coins/2012-australian-one-ton-gold-kangaroo-named-largest-most-valuable-coin-in-the-world/
Page 48, Position 4: In 1988, there were 600,000 illegal gold prospectors in Brazil.: http://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/16/world/venezuela-s-policy-for-brazil-s-gold-miners-bullets.html
Page 49, Position 1: In Brazil, ‘Rio’ is pronounced ‘Hio’.: http://www.buuteeq.com/blog/rio-de-janeiro-travels/
Page 49, Position 2: ‘Dr Seuss’ should be pronounced ‘Dr Zoice’.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/legacy/magazinemonitor/2007/04/10_things_we_didnt_know_last_w_20.shtml
Page 49, Position 3: The ancient Egyptian word for ‘cat’ was pronounced ‘miaow’.: http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&ved=0CDUQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.researchgate.net%2Fpublication%2F257775773_Meow_another_name_for_Cat_Jennifer_Ball%2Ffile%2Fe0b49525d7210e60da.pdf&ei=J9LPUoOhK8nxhQfj0YGgBw&usg=AFQjCNFnXqkdbZNx6piVrzOw3NRCgjS3Ug&sig2=Gz1lbmq-2ikFhu_IyqEi7w
Page 49, Position 4: Lettuce was sacred to Min, the ancient Egyptian god of fertility, because it grew long and straight and oozed a milky substance when rubbed.: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/when-lettuce-was-a-sacred-sex-symbol-12271795/
Page 50, Position 1: Aristotle thought small penises were better because semen got cold in large ones.: Friedman, A Mind of Its Own: A cultural history of the penis (Simon and Schuster, 4 Sep 2008)
Page 50, Position 2: Ancient Greeks declared their love for a woman by throwing an apple at her.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple#Greek_mythology
Page 50, Position 3: Terry’s used to make a Chocolate Lemon and a Chocolate Apple.: http://www.yorkmix.com/food-drink/things-to-do-in-national-chocolate-week-2013/
Page 50, Position 4: In 1976, Ron Wayne, co-founder of Apple, sold his shares for $800; today they would be worth $35 billion.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2388674/The-unluckiest-man-world-Meet-Ron-Wayne-Apple-Incs-forgotten-founder.html
Page 51, Position 1: James and the Giant Peach was originally called James and the Giant Cherry.: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/jun/07/roalddahl.booksforchildrenandteenagers
Page 51, Position 2: Twister was originally called Pretzel.: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/twister-inventor-dies-82-article-1.1396113
Page 51, Position 3: The Boy Scouts’ motto ‘Be prepared’ was originally followed by ‘to die for your country’.: History Today, May 2013
Page 51, Position 4: Homer’s epics were originally set to music.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24611454
Page 52, Position 1: Classical music played in restaurants increases the amount people spend on wine.: The Vegetarian, Winter 2013
Page 52, Position 2: Drinking wine before a meal makes you eat 25% more.: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/seriouslyscience/2014/05/15/drinking-wine-meal-makes-eat/
Page 52, Position 3: Wine drinkers pour 12% more wine into a glass they’re holding than one that’s sitting on the table.: http://www.academicwino.com/2013/09/distractions-influence-wine-pours.html/
Page 52, Position 4: ‘Response to Those who Criticise Me for Spending Money on Old Wine & Prostitutes’ is a lost work by Aristippus, a disciple of Socrates.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ADJpAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA160&lpg=PA160&dq=%22Old+Wine+and+Prostitutes%22+Aristippus&source=bl&ots=yXmkRvmXwg&sig=s9okNKXiMvniv0OQ8rLRvvxpYsQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=FbbsU-iDM8uy7AbnxIHYAw&ved=0CCAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22Old%20Wine%20and%20Prostitutes%22%20Aristippus&f=false
Page 53, Position 1: The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus attempted to cure a serious illness by lying in the sun covered in cow dung. He died the following day.: http://www.pantheism.net/paul/history/heraclitus.htm
Page 53, Position 2: An Egyptian cure for insanity was to eat snake meatballs under a full moon.: Brueton, Diana, Many Moons, (Fireside, 1 Oct 1992)
Page 53, Position 3: In the Himalayas, the smoke from burning millipedes is used to treat haemorrhoids.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millipede
Page 53, Position 4: Queen Elizabeth I owned two ‘unicorn horns’ that were supposed to purify water and cure sickness.: http://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21579429-cloisters-marks-its-75th-anniversary-celebration-unicorn-horn-plenty
Page 54, Position 1: 23 Nobel Prizes for Medicine have been won as a result of research on guinea pigs.: http://www.rds-online.org.uk/pages/page.asp?i_ToolbarID=2&i_PageID=2096
Page 54, Position 2: Eight million years ago, guinea pigs were the size of cows.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3120950.stm
Page 54, Position 3: American cows produce four times as much milk as they did in 1942.: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/05/the-perfect-milk-machine-how-big-data-transformed-the-dairy-industry/256423/
Page 54, Position 4: British fishermen work 17 times harder than they did in the 1880s, to catch the same number of fish.: New Scientist, 16 Nov 2013
Page 55, Position 1: It’s illegal in Saudi Arabia for men to work in lingerie shops.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/saudiarabia/9546300/Saudi-Arabia-closes-100-lingerie-shops-with-male-sales-staff.html
Page 55, Position 2: Franz Liszt was the first musician to have women’s underwear thrown at him.: http://www.cpr.org/classical/story/franz-liszt-turns-200#sthash.uR78Bcm2.dpuf
Page 55, Position 3: In 2014, a pair of underpants donated by the mayor of Brussels was stolen from the Brussels Underpants Museum.: http://www.itv.com/news/update/2014-01-22/mayor-of-brussels-underpants-stolen/
Page 55, Position 4: JFK was wearing a corset when he was shot.: History Today, Nov 13
Page 56, Position 1: Sir Alex Ferguson collects mementoes of the assassination of JFK.: London Review of Books, 9 Jan 2014
Page 56, Position 2: Hugo Chávez, former president of Venezuela, hosted the chat show Aló Presidente every Sunday from 1999 to 2012.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlÃ³_Presidente
Page 56, Position 3: Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, the president of Turkmenistan, sacked 30 TV news staff in 2008 after a cockroach was spotted walking across the set during a bulletin.: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=19289547
Page 56, Position 4: Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has released three pop-song albums since becoming the president of Indonesia.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susilo_Bambang_Yudhoyono#Music_.2F_Discography
Page 57, Position 1: The Royal Navy uses blasts of Britney Spears’s ‘Oops! . . . I Did It Again’ to scare off Somali pirates.: The Week, 2 Nov 2103
Page 57, Position 2: 94% of terrorist campaigns fail to achieve a single one of their strategic goals.: Scientific American, Aug 2013
Page 57, Position 3: Saudi law defines atheists as terrorists.: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/saudi-arabia-declares-all-atheists-are-terrorists-in-new-law-to-crack-down-on-political-dissidents-9228389.html
Page 57, Position 4: Saudi Arabia is considering stopping execution by beheading due to a shortage of official swordsmen.: http://world.time.com/2013/03/11/a-lack-of-swordsmen-may-lead-saudis-to-abolish-beheadings/
Page 58, Position 1: At his execution, Louis XVI was too fat to fit into the guillotine.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=nkJqSmHcd5oC&pg=PA232&lpg=PA232&dq=louis+XVI+fat+guillotine+neck&source=bl&ots=9rsW5O6Qhp&sig=lfbBP27Y4whjOh4KBKb9DIG-OhQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=IkhBU456hcyEB7aigOAJ&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=louis%20XVI%20fat%20guillotine%20neck&f=false
Page 58, Position 2: Oliver Cromwell was dug up and beheaded two years after his death.: http://www.olivercromwell.org/faqs2.htm
Page 58, Position 3: In 1944, nine US airmen were shot down over Chichi Jima. Eight of them were executed (four of whom were also eaten) and one (George H. W. Bush) went on to become president.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/1445167/George-Bushs-comrades-eaten-by-their-Japanese-PoW-guards.html
Page 58, Position 4: The Red Baron’s final word was ‘kaput’.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=2vGpB3NEGlsC&pg=PA8&lpg=PA8&dq=kaputt+%22red+baron%22&source=bl&ots=emAPdDUSTO&sig=RagTwqXq4lgQ8SsEKbGNj_T8OCY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=XudYU5a8DKq47AbViIHgDA&ved=0CEIQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=kaputt%20%22red%20baron%22&f=false
Page 59, Position 1: The Red Arrows were originally known as the Red Pelicans.: Financial Times Weekend Magazine, 28th Sep 2013
Page 59, Position 2: More US Air Force pilots are training to fly drones than are training to fly planes.: Smithsonian Magazine, November 2013
Page 59, Position 3: Fighter pilots in stressful situations release such large amounts of hormones that they may ejaculate.: Shields, David, The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead, (London: Penguin, 2008)
Page 59, Position 4: 56% of British airline pilots admit to having fallen asleep on the job, and 29% say they’ve woken up to find their co-pilot asleep.: http://travel.aol.co.uk/2013/09/27/more-than-half-of-british-pilots-fall-asleep-on-the-job-says-balpa/
Page 60, Position 1: A quarter of American couples sleep in separate beds.
Page 60, Position 2: The Japanese sleep two hours a night less than the Chinese.: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/24/average-daily-nightly-sleep-country-world_n_3805886.html
Page 60, Position 3: Blind people are twice as likely to smell things in their dreams as sighted people.: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/02/26/how-the-blind-dream/
Page 60, Position 4: Blind people are four times more likely to have nightmares than sighted people.: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/02/26/how-the-blind-dream/
Page 61, Position 1: In 2013, China’s only female Mao Zedong impersonator was divorced by her husband, who ‘got tired of feeling that he was sleeping with the Chairman’.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/10464908/Chairman-Mao-ruined-my-marriage.html
Page 61, Position 2: Sleeping on your stomach is the most likely position to produce erotic dreams.: http://www.medicaldaily.com/why-sleeping-your-stomach-leads-more-erotic-dreams-241863
Page 61, Position 3: Duck-billed platypuses do not have stomachs.: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/12/03/how-the-platypus-and-a-quarter-of-fishes-lost-their-stomachs/
Page 61, Position 4: The eyes of the celestial eye goldfish really are bigger than its stomach.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=PTYAAQAAQBAJ&pg=PT70&lpg=PT70&dq=%22eyes+are+bigger+than+its+stomach%22&source=bl&ots=mx_LFxtSRW&sig=B0ME56S5aQbxF3rzc-M8ebN-J7w&hl=en&sa=X&ei=fAdZU77NIKe50QXpjoCACQ&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAjgK#v=onepage&q=%22eyes%20are%20bigger%20than%20its%20stomach%22&f=false
Page 62, Position 1: The pupils of human eyes are at their biggest as an adolescent and slowly get smaller until the age of 60.: Shields, David, The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead, (London: Penguin, 2008)
Page 62, Position 2: Human brains are 10% smaller than they were 20,000 years ago.: http://discovermagazine.com/2010/sep/25-modern-humans-smart-why-brain-shrinking
Page 62, Position 3: Einstein’s brain was smaller than average.: http://www.aip.org/history/einstein/einbrain.htm
Page 62, Position 4: In 1939, the US army was smaller than the armies of Portugal or Romania and ranked 17th in the world; by 1945, it numbered 8.3 million.: http://www.fpri.org/footnotes/1415.200905.atkinson.usarmywwii.html
Page 63, Position 1: In the 1930s, the US army drew up plans to invade Mexico and Canada.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=-nBz0AwHn2UC&pg=PA181&lpg=PA181&dq=1935+military+airfields+canada&source=bl&ots=o-BZO1OJde&sig=RNyJz6jFSNJOh-FfzvMYqFS32rw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=blFNUYbHCobZOYvzgdgN&ved=0CD4Q6AEwAjgU#v=onepage&q=1935%20military%20airfields%20canada&f=false
Page 63, Position 2: Alternative names proposed for Canada in 1867 were Tuponia, Borealia, Cabotia, Transatlantica, Victorialand and Superior.: Ferguson, Will, Canadian History for Dummies, (John Wiley & Sons, 15 Oct 2012)
Page 63, Position 3: When Canada’s Northwest Territories were divided in two in 1999, people voted to keep the old name. The runner-up was ‘Bob’.: http://www.ualberta.ca/~mbeaudoi/Bob.html
Page 63, Position 4: For 500 years from the 13th century, 70% of Englishmen were called Robert, John, Thomas, Richard or William.: http://public.oed.com/aspects-of-english/shapers-of-english/personal-names-and-the-development-of-english/
Page 64, Position 1: 252 people are born every minute.: http://blogs.howstuffworks.com/keep-asking/how-many-people-are-born-every-minute/
Page 64, Position 2: ‘Last shake o’ the bag’ was Victorian slang for ‘youngest child’.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=byP7AwAAQBAJ&pg=PA335&dq=â€˜Last+shake+ofâ€™+the+bagâ€™&hl=en&sa=X&ei=SbnsU8yDFsOp0QXYk4DwCQ&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=â€˜Last%20shake%20ofâ€™%20the%20bagâ€™&f=false
Page 64, Position 3: When having their photograph taken, Victorians said ‘prunes’ rather than ‘cheese’ to make themselves look more serious.: http://www.uni.edu/fabos/seminar/readings/cheese.pdf
Page 64, Position 4: When Danes pose for photos, they say ‘orange’, the Chinese say ‘aubergine’ and the Germans say ‘ant shit’.: http://www.omniglot.com/language/phrases/saycheese.htm
Page 65, Position 1: There are beetles named after Darth Vader, Kate Winslet and Adolf Hitler.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18889495
Page 65, Position 2: Nachos were invented by a man named Nacho.: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/15/nachos-inventor_n_1515233.html
Page 65, Position 3: Men whose initials have positive connotations, like LOV or WIN, live 4½ years longer than those with negative ones, like BAD or PIG.: http://economics-files.pomona.edu/GarySmith/badInitials.pdf
Page 65, Position 4: In 1883, a man named Jack Ferry crossed the English Channel on a floating tricycle.: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/fosters-english-oddities-weird-wonderful-2240175
Page 66, Position 1: The father of Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, was a unicyclist in a circus.: London Review of Books, 5 Dec 2013
Page 66, Position 2: There are 100,000 more bicycles in Amsterdam than there are people.: http://www.dutchamsterdam.nl/68-amsterdam-city-of-bikes
Page 66, Position 3: In 2009, a search of Loch Ness for the Loch Ness monster located 100,000 golf balls.: http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/stories/search-for-loch-ness-monster-nets-100000-golf-balls
Page 66, Position 4: At any one time there are 100,000 ships at sea.: George, Rose, Deep Sea and Foreign Going, (London: Portobello Books, 2013)
Page 67, Position 1: The world’s largest container ships can carry 746 million bananas.: George, Rose, Deep Sea and Foreign Going, (London: Portobello Books, 2013)
Page 67, Position 2: Bananas are considered unlucky on fishing boats.: http://www.snopes.com/luck/superstition/bananas.asp
Page 67, Position 3: In 1923, the sheet music for ‘Yes, We Have No Bananas’ sold 1,000 copies a day.: http://cwh.ucsc.edu/bananas/Site/Bananas%20and%20Popular%20Culture.html
Page 67, Position 4: There are more than 1,000 species of banana. We eat only one of them.: http://www.foodrepublic.com/2011/07/26/banana-problem
Page 68, Position 1: Eating 20 million bananas would give you a fatal dose of radioactivity.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15288975
Page 68, Position 2: Bananas are used to make kimonos.: http://cwh.ucsc.edu/bananas/Site/Bananas%20and%20Popular%20Culture.html
Page 68, Position 3: Queen Victoria had a novelty bustle with a music box that played ‘God Save the Queen’ when she sat down.: http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/c/corsets-and-bustles-1880-1890-from-over-structured-opulence-to-the-healthy-corset/
Page 68, Position 4: The ‘Masters in Lunacy’ were Victorian officials who investigated whether people claiming to be insane were faking it.: Oxford English Dictionary
Page 69, Position 1: When he enlisted in the army, J. R. R. Tolkien’s son Michael put down his father’s profession as ‘Wizard’.: http://interestingliterature.com/2014/01/03/five-fascinating-facts-about-j-r-r-tolkien/
Page 69, Position 2: New Zealand has an official National Wizard.: http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/opinion/8087658/Wizard-reminisces-as-he-turns-80
Page 69, Position 3: The New Zealand badminton team was nicknamed ‘the Black Cocks’, but had to drop it after complaints.: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/15/nz_badminton_kerfuffle/
Page 69, Position 4: New Zealand’s 90-Mile Beach is 55 miles long.: http://www.newzealand.com/au/feature/ninety-mile-beach/
Page 70, Position 1: Over the last 10,000 years Niagara Falls has moved seven miles upstream.: http://www.niagarafallsinfo.com/history-item.php?entry_id=1268&current_category_id=152
Page 70, Position 2: The United States doubled in size in 1983, when the Reagan administration expanded its coastal waters from three to 200 nautical miles.: National Geographic, Nov 2013
Page 70, Position 3: In 2011, scientists re-measured Norway’s beaches, islands and fjords, adding 11,000 miles to its coastline.: National Geographic, Nov 2013
Page 70, Position 4: The coastline of Norway is long enough to circle the planet 2½ times.: National Geographic, Nov 2013
Page 71, Position 1: Every year, Iceland gets wider by two centimetres.: http://www.mensfitness.com/life/travel/fit-travel-top-10-adventure-activities-in-iceland/slide/2
Page 71, Position 2: Iceland has 25 puffins for every person.: http://www.gwu.edu/~geog/ammap/pdfs/iceland-skyrkaka.pdf
Page 71, Position 3: Men outnumber women in Vatican City by 17 to 1.: National Geographic, Nov 2013
Page 71, Position 4: There are as many bacteria in two servings of yoghurt as there are people on Earth.: http://www.npr.org/2011/10/28/141800414/does-probiotic-yogurt-really-affect-digestion
Page 72, Position 1: The ice lost in Antarctica every year would be enough to give each person on Earth 1,360,000 ice cubes.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-27509471
Page 72, Position 2: The technical name for an ice-cream headache is sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia.: http://chemistry.about.com/od/howthingsworkfaqs/f/how-brain-freeze-works.htm
Page 72, Position 3: Hellenologophobia is the fear of Greek terms.: http://www.phobiasource.com/hellenologophobia-fear-of-greek-phrases-or-complex-scientific-terminology/
Page 72, Position 4: A musophobist is a person who distrusts poetry.: http://schott.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/23/daily-lexeme-musophobist/?_r=0
Page 73, Position 1: ‘Invictus’, Nelson Mandela’s favourite poem, was written by the man who inspired the character of Long John Silver.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Ernest_Henley
Page 73, Position 2: 80% of pirates caught by the European Union’s naval police are released.: George, Rose, Deep Sea and Foreign Going, (London: Portobello Books, 2013)
Page 73, Position 3: People who pirate music also buy more legal music than those who don’t.: http://boingboing.net/2009/04/20/norwegian-p2p-downlo.html
Page 73, Position 4: Barry Manilow’s No. 1 hit ‘I Write the Songs’ wasn’t written by Barry Manilow.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Manilow
Page 74, Position 1: When the Arctic Monkeys formed, none of them could play a musical instrument.: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/how-arctic-monkeys-reinvented-their-sound-20131021
Page 74, Position 2: The real Maria von Trapp wasn’t invited to the premiere of The Sound of Music.: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059742/trivia
Page 74, Position 3: The Duke of Wellington played cricket for Ireland.: http://www.cricketleinster.ie/about/history
Page 74, Position 4: The current Earl of Sandwich runs a chain of sandwich shops called Earl of Sandwich.: http://www.earlofsandwich.co.uk
Page 75, Position 1: If you ate in a different New York eatery every day for 12 years, you still wouldn’t have visited all of the city’s restaurants.: http://mentalfloss.com/article/55038/25-things-you-might-not-have-known-about-new-york-city
Page 75, Position 2: 25 November 2012 was the first day since 1960 that there was no murder or manslaughter in New York City.: Wonderpedia Magazine, Sep 2013
Page 75, Position 3: During its restoration in 1982, the Statue of Liberty’s head was accidentally installed two feet off-centre.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/northamerica/usa/newyork/10157989/Statue-of-Liberty-50-fascinating-facts.html
Page 75, Position 4: New buildings in New York must have twice as many women’s toilets as men’s.: http://www.economist.com/node/16542591
Page 76, Position 1: Toilet Duck, cellophane and the division sign (÷) were all invented in Switzerland.: http://www.muellerscience.com/ENGLISH/Swiss_Inventions_and_Discoveries.htm
Page 76, Position 2: The first sketch for the design of the Mini was drawn on a napkin in Switzerland.: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/may/07/motoring-mini-cooper-ten-facts
Page 76, Position 3: Switzerland monitors its airspace around the clock but only intercepts illegal flights during office hours.: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-17/invading-switzerland-try-before-8-or-after-5.html
Page 76, Position 4: In 2006, the most popular name for cows in Switzerland was Fiona.: http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/hope-for-lonely-rodents-rent-a-guinea-pig-service-takes-off-in-switzerland-a-787336.html
Page 77, Position 1: A cow with a name will produce 450 more pints of milk a year than one without a name.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/agriculture/farming/4358115/Cows-with-names-produce-more-milk-scientists-say.html
Page 77, Position 2: The guts of 250,000 cows were used to make the balloon lining for every Zeppelin.: Nova (PBS Radio)
Page 77, Position 3: The Spanish for ‘when pigs fly’ is ‘when hens piss’.: http://nautil.us/blog/when-pigs-fly-crayfish-whistle-and-it-snows-red-snowflakes
Page 77, Position 4: In German, things don’t ‘sell like hot cakes’, they ‘go like warm rolls’.: http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2013/09/german-idioms/
Page 78, Position 1: German mothers-to-be have ‘roast dinners’ not ‘buns’ in their ‘ovens’.: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/mar/24/pregnancy-childbirth-global-traditions-baby
Page 78, Position 2: Pregnant women are 42% more likely to be in a car crash but less likely to die than men of the same age.: The Economist 17 May 2014
Page 78, Position 3: Only two countries have not ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child: Somalia and the US.: http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/issues/children-s-rights/convention-on-the-rights-of-the-child
Page 78, Position 4: The US, Papua New Guinea, Swaziland, Liberia and Lesotho are the only countries without mandatory maternity leave.: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/career-advice/maternity-leave-basics-canada-vs-the-us/article4197679/
Page 79, Position 1: A lully-prigger was an 18th-century thief who caught children and stole their clothing.: Chambers Slang Dictionary
Page 79, Position 2: By the time they are eight children have forgotten 60% of what happened before they were three.: http://www.popsci.com/blog-network/kinderlab/birth-memory-why-kids-forget-what-happened-age-7
Page 79, Position 3: In 1922, Ernest Hemingway’s wife lost his entire life’s work by leaving it on a train.: http://lostmanuscripts.com/2010/07/31/hemingways-lost-suitcase/
Page 79, Position 4: In 1989, a Russian psychic was run over by a train and killed while attempting to prove he could stop one using the power of his mind.: http://www.aintnowaytogo.com/trainEsp.htm
Page 80, Position 1: American tank crews have a superstition that will not allow them to eat apricots, allow apricots on board or even say the word ‘apricot’.: http://www.amtrac.org/1atbn/Interest/Apricots.asp
Page 80, Position 2: The crunch of a crisp or an apple in your mouth is a mini sonic boom.: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/26/health/mary-roach-on-studying-food-and-how-humans-eat-it.html
Page 80, Position 3: Polo mints release light when you snap them.: http://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/2014/feb/27/john-mcnally-top-10-crazy-science-facts-true-or-false
Page 80, Position 4: Mice can’t see red light.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=vnRpW-gI9JMC&pg=RA2-PA291&dq=red-lights+mice+dark-phase&hl=en#v=onepage&q=red-lights%20mice%20dark-phase&f=false
Page 81, Position 1: Pregreening is creeping forward while waiting for a red light to change.: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Pregreening"http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2010-08-06/news/27589386_1_new-words-vaults-english-dictionary
Page 81, Position 2: Herds of sheep moved at night must have a white light at the front and a red light at the rear.: https://www.gov.uk/rules-about-animals-47-to-58/other-animals-56-to-58
Page 81, Position 3: Coyotes in the US have learnt how traffic lights work so they can cross the road safely.: http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2012/10/06/city-folk-likely-to-see-coyotes-wolves-more.html
Page 81, Position 4: Traffic lights were introduced 18 years before the car was invented.: http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/trafficlight.htm
Page 82, Position 1: In 1990, there were no roundabouts in the US; today there are more than 3,000.: The Economist, 5 Oct 2013
Page 82, Position 2: 40% of pedestrian-crossing buttons in Manchester don’t work.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23869955
Page 82, Position 3: A group of pigeons regularly boards the London Underground at Hammersmith and alights at Ladbroke Grove.: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130108122724.htm
Page 82, Position 4: The average London pigeon has 1.6 feet.: http://www.londonpigeons.co.uk
Page 83, Position 1: Deliveries by pigeon post during the Second World War were 95% successful.: http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/socialscience/2012/12/in-service-of-their-country-the-pigeon-manual.html
Page 83, Position 2: In 1910, the average Briton sent 116 items by post.: Garfield, Simon, Letters: Journey Through a Vanishing World, (Canongate Books, 24 Oct 2013)
Page 83, Position 3: The longest letter ever printed in The Times was 11,071 words long. Today, the whole letters page carries only 2,000 words.: The Times, 5 May 2010
Page 83, Position 4: 84% of writers to the letters page of The Times are men.: The Times, 5 May 2010
Page 84, Position 1: During his lifetime Lewis Carroll wrote 98,721 letters.: Gattegno, Jean, Lewis Carroll, (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1977)
Page 84, Position 2: Philip Larkin and Kingsley Amis signed off letters to each other with the word ‘bum’.: http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1327895.ece
Page 84, Position 3: Chimpanzees can identify each other by looking at photographs of their bottoms.: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/09/080930-chimp-butts_2.html
Page 84, Position 4: People can recognise each other 90% of the time just from the way they walk.: New Scientist, 3 Aug 2012
Page 85, Position 1: To perfect Hercule Poirot’s walk, actor David Suchet clasped a coin between his buttocks.: http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/shortcuts/2013/nov/05/hercule-poirot-david-suchet-bottom-coin-agatha-christie
Page 85, Position 2: Lizards can’t breathe and walk at the same time.: http://indianapublicmedia.org/amomentofscience/walking-and-breathing/
Page 85, Position 3: Salamanders can hear with their lungs.: http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=02-P13-00011&segmentID=7
Page 85, Position 4: Lobsters listen with their legs.: http://thelobsteringlife.com/2010/02/10-fun-facts-about-lobsters-and-one-dull-one/
Page 86, Position 1: A lobster’s brain is in its throat.: http://thelobsteringlife.com/2010/02/10-fun-facts-about-lobsters-and-one-dull-one/
Page 86, Position 2: The human brain cannot feel pain.: http://www.brainline.org/content/2012/07/can-the-brain-itself-feel-pain.html
Page 86, Position 3: When neuroscientist James Fallon studied the brain scans of murderers using his own scan as a control, he discovered he was a psychopath.: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/ist/?next=/science-nature/the-neuroscientist-who-discovered-he-was-a-psychopath-180947814/
Page 86, Position 4: John F. Kennedy’s brain was removed during his autopsy and is still missing.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10392527/John-F-Kennedys-missing-brain-may-have-been-taken-by-younger-brother-claims-new-book.html
Page 87, Position 1: 9,000 books are listed as missing from the British Library.: http://www.abebooks.com/blog/index.php/2009/03/18/a-tale-of-9000-mislaid-books
Page 87, Position 2: Lee Harvey Oswald still owes an overdue book – The Shark and the Sardines by Juan José Arévalo – to Dallas public library.: http://thescoopblog.dallasnews.com/2013/11/on-top-of-everything-else-oswald-had-an-overdue-library-book.html/
Page 87, Position 3: Cleopatra wrote a book about make-up.: McKeown, JC, A Cabinet of Roman Curiosities, (Oxford: OUP, 2010)
Page 87, Position 4: 50,000 Korans are buried in the mountains of Pakistan, each one in a white shroud.: Battles, Matthew, Library: An unquiet history, (W. W. Norton, 17 Jun 2004)
Page 88, Position 1: 65% of Pakistani soldiers have dandruff.: Abrahams, Marc, This is Improbable Too (Oneworld Publications, 6 Mar 2014) p.87
Page 88, Position 2: 13% of Greek children have dimpled cheeks.: Abrahams, Marc, This is Improbable Too (Oneworld Publications, 6 Mar 2014) p.87
Page 88, Position 3: 85% of the exhibits in Peru’s Museum of Gold are fakes.: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/peru/lima/sights/museums-galleries/museo-de-oro-del-peru#ixzz2r7muXjDD
Page 88, Position 4: 90% of the thermostats in American offices don’t work.: McRaney, David, You Are Now Less Dumb, (Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated, 5 Aug 2014)
Page 89, Position 1: Davy Crockett was a US congressman.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett
Page 89, Position 2: Whoopi Goldberg used to be a bricklayer.: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000155/bio
Page 89, Position 3: Jerry Springer was born in Highgate Tube station.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-18231560
Page 89, Position 4: Phil Collins divorced his second wife by fax.: http://www.dawn.com/news/595302/entertainment-ten-things-to-know-about-walt-disney
Page 90, Position 1: Nobody knows how big Pluto is.: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/mysteries_of_the_universe/2014/02/pluto_new_horizons_mission_the_dwarf_planet_explains_the_history_of_our.html
Page 90, Position 2: If you stood on the Martian equator at noon, it would feel like summer at your feet and winter at your head.: http://www.cbc.ca/newsblogs/yourcommunity/2014/01/canada-as-cold-as-mars-not-quite-eh.html
Page 90, Position 3: From 2000 bc to ad 1992, astronomers discovered three new planets. In 2014, 700 were found in a single day.: http://www.techtimes.com/articles/3817/20140228/715-new-exoplanets-found-in-one-day-with-broken-kepler-telescope.htm
Page 90, Position 4: The notebooks of US astronauts were fireproofed with seaweed from the Isle of Lewis.: Crofton, Ian, A Dictionary of Scottish Phrase and Fable, (Birlinn, 2012)
Page 91, Position 1: When the Lewis Chessmen were discovered in 1831, the man who found them ran away, terrified he’d interrupted an assembly of elves.: Kingshill, Sophia, and Westwood, Jennifer, The Fabled Coast, (Random House, 28 Jun 2012)
Page 91, Position 2: Dublin is home to Ireland’s National Leprechaun Museum.: http://www.leprechaunmuseum.ie/about-us/
Page 91, Position 3: All the chickens’ eggs produced in the world each year would make an omelette the size of Northern Ireland.: http://www.bubblews.com/news/47465-the-produce-we-produce
Page 91, Position 4: Hummingbirds lay eggs the size of peas.: http://www.fcps.edu/islandcreekes/ecology/ruby-throated_hummingbird.htm
Page 92, Position 1: Seahorses beat their fins almost as fast as hummingbirds beat their wings.: Safran Foer, Jonathan, Eating Animals, (New York: Little, Brown, 2010)
Page 92, Position 2: The Milky Way gives birth to a new star every 50 days.: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2006/milkyway_seven.html
Page 92, Position 3: Almost 1% of American mothers claim to have been virgins when they gave birth.: http://www.livescience.com/42040-virgin-births-modern-day.html
Page 92, Position 4: The closer a woman is to the equator, the more likely she is to give birth to a girl.: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-equatorial-enigma-why-are-more-girls-than-boys-born-in-the-tropics-ndash-and-what-does-it-mean-1658981.html
Page 93, Position 1: Newborn babies of both sexes can produce milk.: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0002483/
Page 93, Position 2: Flor de Guia cheese from the Canary Islands must only be made by women, otherwise it is not considered the genuine article.: http://blog.oup.com/2014/04/facts-you-never-knew-about-cheese
Page 93, Position 3: Britons are the most lactose-tolerant people in the world.: http://blog.oup.com/2014/04/facts-you-never-knew-about-cheese
Page 93, Position 4: ‘Cheesy’ originally meant ‘excellent’.: http://blog.oup.com/2014/04/facts-you-never-knew-about-cheese
Page 94, Position 1: The word ‘suffragette’ started out as an insult coined by the Daily Mail.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=XmwCN-Bju4wC&pg=PA68&lpg=PA68&dq=suffragette+insult+daily+mail&source=bl&ots=0vgo_ETYVI&sig=NsvxJEVOsO8yK2kZxrA8mCPGzO4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=N-lwU-LwL8jpPIa4gYgG&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=suffragette%20insult%20daily%20mail&f=false
Page 94, Position 2: ‘Bingo’ was first used as slang for ‘brandy’.: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=bingo
Page 94, Position 3: Charlotte Brontë was the first person to use the terms ‘cottage-garden’, ‘raised eyebrow’, ‘Now, now!’, ‘kitchen chair’ and ‘Wild West’.: http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2014/04/charlotte-bronte-oed/
Page 94, Position 4: ‘Sexpert’, ‘cushty’, ‘freebie’ ‘makeover’, ‘comfort zone’ and ‘dream team’ all date from the 1920s.: http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2014/04/20-words-originated-1920s/
Page 95, Position 1: Broomstacking is a traditional drink taken after a game of curling; the losing team foots the bill.: http://imgur.com/Lwy6gZc
Page 95, Position 2: After the first recorded hurling match the losing team was brutally murdered.: McAlister, Peter, Manthropology
Page 95, Position 3: In 1920, Clarence Blethen retired hurt from a baseball match after biting himself on the bottom with the false teeth he kept in his back pocket.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=KhApWFQw2LYC&pg=PA7&lpg=PA7&dq=Climax+Blethen&source=bl&ots=8oox4y5_yu&sig=TCMco6syxnR12IJZ8J3nxAUVhig&hl=en&sa=X&ei=cn8dUYnWLY2y0QH7yIDIAQ&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Climax%20Blethen&f=false
Page 95, Position 4: Louis X and Charles VIII of France both died as a result of playing tennis.: Brown, Cameron, Wimbledon Facts, Figures & Fun
Page 96, Position 1: After the Battle of Hastings, King Harold’s body was identified by the tattoo of his wife’s name over his heart.: http://mentalfloss.com/article/50761/10-historical-titans-surprising-tattoos
Page 96, Position 2: 90% of the men in Paraguay died in the War of the Triple Alliance. From 1864 to 1870 they fought Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina simultaneously.: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/profiles/Paraguay.pdf
Page 96, Position 3: A refereeing decision in a football match between Argentina and Peru in 1964 led to a riot in which 300 fans were killed.: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/riot-erupts-at-soccer-match
Page 96, Position 4: A fight between chameleons is more likely to be started by the one with brighter stripes.: http://www.youtube.com/embed/vSVfXVG2CD0?wmode=opaque
Page 97, Position 1: The 10-spot ladybird has between 0 and 15 spots.: http://www.ladybird-survey.org/species_desc.aspx?species=6455%2059604
Page 97, Position 2: William Buckland was expelled from the shrine of St Rosalia, patron saint of Palermo, Sicily, for pointing out that her bones were actually those of a goat.: BBC History Magazine, Sep 2013
Page 97, Position 3: Vultures can turn a dead body into a skeleton in under five hours.: Abrahams, Marc, This is Improbable Too (Oneworld Publications, 6 Mar 2014) p.87
Page 97, Position 4: A walrus’s penis bone is as long as a human thigh bone.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/26231870?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
Page 98, Position 1: There are at least 600 men in the world with two penises.: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/01/03/this-man-claims-to-have-two-penises-science-confirms-it-s-possible.html
Page 98, Position 2: The penis of the Argonaut mollusc snaps off during sex: it can only mate once.: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2010/05/18/the-argonaut-an-octopus-that-creates-its-own-ballast-tank/
Page 98, Position 3: Chinese eunuchs kept their testicles in a jar in the hope they will reattach themselves in the next world.: Finlay, Victoria, Jewels, a secret history
Page 98, Position 4: The world has two earthquakes every minute.: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/year/eqstats.php
Page 99, Position 1: The Northern Hemisphere is 1.5ºC hotter than the Southern Hemisphere.: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21829145.000-ocean-pump-keeps-northern-hemisphere-hot.html#.U0PvC6WuefU
Page 99, Position 2: 90% of people live in the Northern Hemisphere.: http://www.businessinsider.com/90-of-people-live-in-the-northern-hemisphere-2012-5
Page 99, Position 3: Wherever a leaf is in the world, its internal temperature is always 21ºC.: http://www.livescience.com/2594-study-tree-leaves-built-thermostat.html
Page 99, Position 4: When it gets too hot, some cacti move underground to cool down.: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101124162220.htm
Page 100, Position 1: Prisoners on Alcatraz always had hot showers so they didn’t get acclimatised to cold water and try to escape by swimming.: http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/03/72941
Page 100, Position 2: In Inuit languages, the closest word to ‘freedom’ is annakpok, which means ‘not caught’.: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=11605
Page 100, Position 3: In the French Revolution, prisoners were taken to the guillotine on wagons used to transport manure.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumbrel
Page 100, Position 4: Scatomancy is telling the future by looking at turds.: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/20/scatomancer_n_4309974.html?1384973470
Page 101, Position 1: Henry VIII’s lavatory at Hampton Court was known as ‘The Great House of Easement’.: Hart-Davis, Adam, Thunder, flush & Thomas Crapper, (Chalford, 1997)
Page 101, Position 2: Predicting the death of Henry VIII was punishable by death.: http://faculty.history.wisc.edu/sommerville/123/123%20232%20Henry%20&%20edward.htm
Page 101, Position 3: The bell rung to mark the death of Ivan the Terrible’s son Dmitri was tried for treason, found guilty and exiled to Siberia.: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1989/mar/16/another-russian-exile/
Page 101, Position 4: The drugs used for a lethal injection in Texas cost $83.: http://crimeblog.dallasnews.com/2011/02/should-the-cost-of-capital-pun.html/?nclick_check=1
Page 102, Position 1: In 2013, Detroit stopped issuing death certificates because it ran out of paper.: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/05/detroit-death-certificates-paper-ran-out_n_3873008.html
Page 102, Position 2: In 2013, the Venezuelan government accused the opposition of hoarding toilet paper and causing a national shortage.: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/31/venezuela-toilet-paper-bust-police-seize-2500-rolls_n_3363620.html
Page 102, Position 3: 12% of a sloth’s energy is used to climb up and down trees to go to the lavatory.: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/01/21/can-moths-explain-why-sloths-poo-on-the-ground/
Page 102, Position 4: A single sloth can be home to 980 different beetles.: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/01/21/can-moths-explain-why-sloths-poo-on-the-ground/
Page 103, Position 1: Your kitchen sink harbours 100,000 times more germs than your toilet bowl.: http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/homehygiene/Pages/food-and-home-hygiene-facts.aspx
Page 103, Position 2: There are 20 million sea containers in the world. The ships’ crews have no idea what is in them.: George, Rose, Deep Sea and Foreign Going, (London: Portobello Books, 2013)
Page 103, Position 3: ‘The Just Missed It Club’ was for people who almost sailed on the Titanic. Two weeks after it sank, it had 118,337 members.: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/seven-famous-people-who-missed-the-titanic-101902418/
Page 103, Position 4: Jenny, the ship’s cat on the Titanic, did not survive the sinking.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animals_aboard_the_RMS_Titanic
Page 104, Position 1: Over 200 mice are reported in the Houses of Parliament each year, but the authorities won’t get a cat because no one can be trusted to look after it responsibly.: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/03/12/cat-parliament-mouse_n_4949175.html
Page 104, Position 2: According to his wife Mary, Abraham Lincoln’s hobby was cats.: http://www.nps.gov/abli/planyourvisit/lincoln-pets.htm
Page 104, Position 3: Édouard Manet’s cat was eaten during the Siege of Paris in 1870.: http://matthewfraserauthor.com/paris/manets-cat-the-siege-of-paris/
Page 104, Position 4: Karl Lagerfeld’s cat has two maids who write down everything it does in a special book.: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/lostinshowbiz/2013/nov/14/karl-lagerfeld-cat-choupette-party-animal
Page 105, Position 1: During the 1741 General Election, angry voters pelted candidates with dead cats and dogs.: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140130092935.htm
Page 105, Position 2: 69% of the cocaine sold in the US contains de-worming medication.: http://sfist.com/2009/12/29/90-percent_of_all_sf_cocaine_cut_wi.php
Page 105, Position 3: During the Vietnam War, each US soldier took 40 amphetamine tablets a year.: http://science.howstuffworks.com/meth2.htm
Page 105, Position 4: The phrase ‘pipe dream’ originates from the fantasies induced by smoking opium.: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=pipe+dream
Page 106, Position 1: There are more marijuana dispensaries in Denver, Colorado, than there are branches of Starbucks.: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/may/17/cannabis-colorados-budding-industry
Page 106, Position 2: Because of its Happy Meals, McDonald’s is the world’s largest distributor of toys.: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/16/business/fast-food-giveaway-toys-face-rising-recalls.html
Page 106, Position 3: The first McDonald’s only sold hot dogs.: http://money.howstuffworks.com/mcdonalds1.htm
Page 106, Position 4: In 2002, the US military developed a sandwich that stays fresh for three years.: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2151-us-military-creates-indestructible-sandwich.html#.UxCiwkLV9SQ
Page 107, Position 1: Human rights were invented in Iran.: http://humantouchofchemistry.com/the-history-behind-your-eraser.htm
Page 107, Position 2: Vegetarian sausages were first patented in Britain in 1918, by the future German chancellor, Konrad Adenauer.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26935867
Page 107, Position 3: If they don’t care about something, Germans say, ‘It’s sausage to me.’: http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2014/05/alles-wurst-german-sausage-idioms/
Page 107, Position 4: Rice Krispies in Germany go ‘Knisper! Knasper! Knusper!’: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_Krispies
Page 108, Position 1: At the end of the Second World War, US censors kept the news of Germany’s unconditional surrender secret from the public for 11 hours.: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/05/how-world-leaders-tried-to-embargo-one-of-the-biggest-stories-of-the-20th-century/371659/
Page 108, Position 2: The Hindenburg airship was almost named the Hitler.: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v23/n22/es-turner/gas-bags
Page 108, Position 3: When the Hindenburg exploded, 62 of the 97 passengers survived.: Symons, Mitchell, Numberland: The World In Numbers, (London: Michael O'Mara Books, 2013)
Page 108, Position 4: 80% of people who are struck by lightning survive.: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/1999/essd18jun99_1/
Page 109, Position 1: A single lightning bolt produces enough energy to power a family home for a month.: New Scientist, 25 Jan 2014
Page 109, Position 2: The energy released by a bolt of lightning is about the same as that stored in 30 gallons of petrol.: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129531.800-big-bright-spark.html#.VCLv0FYzmag
Page 109, Position 3: The energy needed to manufacture a new car is equivalent to 260 gallons of petrol.: http://www.sierraclub.org/coal/sierra/green-life/2013/10/ask-mr-green-how-much-energy-make-new-car
Page 109, Position 4: Forest fires can be sparked by sunlight magnified by water on dried-out leaves.: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100111091226.htm
Page 110, Position 1: The 45-foot long V2 rocket carried enough alcohol to make 66,130 dry martinis.: http://www.popsci.com/blog-network/vintage-space/how-many-martinis-can-you-fit-inside-v-2-missile
Page 110, Position 2: Pee Cola is a popular soft drink in Ghana.: http://www.ghanayello.com/company/26672/Pee_Cola_Ltd
Page 110, Position 3: In China, Burger King sells PooPoo Smoothies.: http://time.com/61606/burger-king-china-poopoo-smoothie/
Page 110, Position 4: The word for ‘carp’ in Montenegro is krap.: http://www.panacomp.net/montenegro?s=gastronomija_crne_gore
Page 111, Position 1: Barf is Persian for ‘snow’.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barf_(soap)
Page 111, Position 2: The snow at the South Pole reflects sound so well you can hear people talking a mile away.: Wonderpedia Magazine, Jan 2014
Page 111, Position 3: The first snow goggles were made of slices of polished caribou antler.: http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/aoa/s/snow_goggles_of_caribou_antler.aspx
Page 111, Position 4: Icebergs make a crackling sound known as ‘bergy seltzer’.: http://www2.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF4/424.html
Page 112, Position 1: The world’s largest iceberg set off from Antarctica in 2000. It was larger than Jamaica and parts of it still haven’t melted.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceberg_B-15
Page 112, Position 2: The world’s largest and most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton is called Sue.: http://www.fieldmuseum.org/about/press/tyrannosaurus-rex-grew-twice-fast-previously-thought-rapid-growth-came-cost-slower
Page 112, Position 3: Britain’s largest pig is called Boris. He contains enough pork to make 6,000 sausages.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/agriculture/farming/9933090/Revealed-key-facts-about-Britains-fattest-pigs-Boris-and-Marjorie.html
Page 112, Position 4: The largest lizard in Australia can run as fast as Usain Bolt.: http://www.arkive.org/perentie/varanus-giganteus/
Page 113, Position 1: AKB48, Japan’s largest pop group, has 89 members.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AKB48
Page 113, Position 2: Japan has twice as many bank holidays as the UK, including ‘Greenery Day’ and ‘Respect for the Aged Day’.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-27064596
Page 113, Position 3: In 18th-century America, Thanksgiving was celebrated with a day of fasting and prayer.: Safran Foer, Jonathan, Eating Animals, (New York: Little, Brown, 2010)
Page 113, Position 4: In 2013, Hanukkah and Thanksgiving began on the same day. The next time this will happen will be in ad 79811.: http://www.businessinsider.com/hanukkah-and-thanksgiving-the-same-day-2013-10
Page 114, Position 1: In the year 20860, the Islamic and Christian calendars will finally agree.: http://24.media.tumblr.com/b6f88eb3f02dad084cbe2a2721476393/tumblr_mzfe1xio8o1qbh26io1_1280.jpg
Page 114, Position 2: According to the Mayan calendar, the next time the ‘world is going to end’ is 3 May 7138.: http://24.media.tumblr.com/b6f88eb3f02dad084cbe2a2721476393/tumblr_mzfe1xio8o1qbh26io1_1280.jpg
Page 114, Position 3: There is a 12% chance that a game of Monopoly will go on indefinitely.: Focus Magazine, Dec 2013
Page 114, Position 4: If you exposed a diamond on a sunbed, it would eventually evaporate, but you wouldn’t notice any change for 10 billion years.: http://www.opticsinfobase.org/ome/abstract.cfm?uri=ome-1-4-576
Page 115, Position 1: On 28 June 2009, Stephen Hawking hosted a party for time travellers from the future. Nobody showed up.: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/07/02/stephen-hawking-time-travel_n_1643488.html
Page 115, Position 2: Black holes are not black.: http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/news/archive/2008/title,21283,en.php
Page 115, Position 3: Robins’ ‘red’ breasts are orange.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Iat4Bk_YeR4C&pg=PA242&lpg=PA242&dq=robin+orange+breast+%22not+red%22&source=bl&ots=Ov1rE10EJp&sig=c9HVzWBdgVi36j1xDxj0m7ceP_4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Kd5TU4HEEsGBPfiLgMgD&ved=0CE0Q6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=robin%20orange%20breast%20%22not%20red%22&f=false
Page 115, Position 4: Ripe limes are yellow.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=AdmXdvPz07YC&pg=PT428&dq=ripe+limes+yellow&hl=en&sa=X&ei=zd1TU4noKYTd7QbRzoGwDw&ved=0CFAQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=ripe%20limes%20yellow&f=false
Page 116, Position 1: Guinness isn’t black; it’s very dark red.: http://www.guinness.com/en-row/thebeer-process-ingredients.html
Page 116, Position 2: Guinness isn’t suitable for vegetarians; it contains traces of fish bladder.: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/14/guinness-fish-bladder_n_2878165.html
Page 116, Position 3: Human teeth evolved from fish scales.: http://news.discovery.com/animals/dinosaurs/teeth-prehistoric-111117.htm
Page 116, Position 4: Fish don’t need to learn how to swim in schools.: http://www.livescience.com/39712-why-fish-swim-schools.html
Page 117, Position 1: By tapping canes, stamping feet and making clicking sounds, humans can learn to echolocate like bats.: http://www.livescience.com/39231-humans-can-learn-to-echolocate.html
Page 117, Position 2: Species of bat include the wrinkle-faced bat, the thumbless bat, the Antillean ghost-faced bat, the flower-faced bat and the big-eared woolly bat.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Haeckel_Chiroptera.jpg
Page 117, Position 3: Without bats there would be no tequila. It’s made from the agave plant, which is pollinated by bats.: http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/jun/14/natural-world-batman-of-mexico-tv-review
Page 117, Position 4: Tequila heated to 800ºC can be made into diamonds.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7725815.stm
Page 118, Position 1: Moss Cider is a drink made from apples grown in Manchester’s Moss Side.: Geographical Magazine, Jan 2014
Page 118, Position 2: Grapples are apples that taste like grapes.: http://www.grapplefruits.com/
Page 118, Position 3: Grapes are poisonous to dogs.: http://www.aspca.org/pet-care/virtual-pet-behaviorist/dog-behavior/foods-are-hazardous-dogs
Page 118, Position 4: Avocados are toxic to horses.: http://www.aspca.org/pet-care/animal-poison-control/toxic-and-non-toxic-plants/avocado
Page 119, Position 1: Philip is Greek for ‘horse-lover’.: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=Philip
Page 119, Position 2: Falling in love costs you, on average, two close friends.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11321282
Page 119, Position 3: Valentine’s Day is banned in Iran, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan.: The Economist, 15 Feb 2014
Page 119, Position 4: More than 5,000 Swedish men have the first name Love.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_(given_name)
Page 120, Position 1: There are 60 people in Venezuela whose first name is Hitler.: New York Times, 5 Sep 2007
Page 120, Position 2: The place where Hitler killed himself is now a children’s playground.: http://www.vice.com/read/the-site-of-hitlers-suicide-is-now-a-playground
Page 120, Position 3: In ancient Rome, fathers had the legal right to kill their children.: http://www.pbs.org/empires/romans/empire/family.html
Page 120, Position 4: In J. M. Barrie’s novel, Peter Pan ruthlessly ‘thinned out’ the Lost Boys when they got too old.: http://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/86/peter-pan/1543/chapter-5-the-island-come-true/
Page 121, Position 1: In the winter of 1918, half the children in Berlin were suffering from rickets.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26935867
Page 121, Position 2: The population of Ireland is still smaller than it was before the Great Famine of 1845.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=AOyYi3yvoVoC&pg=PA336&lpg=PA336&dq=Population+of+Ireland+never+recovered+from+the+potato+famine&source=bl&ots=yNRA4SSwpZ&sig=nc4Q8LUWc_PeW-GxcsAQUgGPMk0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=U9hcU9WzN5GX0QXSzoHIAg&ved=0CGQQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=Population%20of%20Ireland%20never%20recovered%20from%20the%20potato%20famine&f=false
Page 121, Position 3: The labourers who built the Great Wall of China were were fed on sauerkraut.: http://kitchenproject.com/history/sauerkraut.htm
Page 121, Position 4: Before eating, Nikola Tesla, the ‘father of electricity’, polished each piece of cutlery with 18 napkins.: https://www.pbs.org/tesla/dis/cheney.html
Page 122, Position 1: Ancient Romans ate puppies.: Safran Foer, Jonathan, Eating Animals, (New York: Little, Brown, 2010)
Page 122, Position 2: Eating dogs is legal in 44 US states.: Safran Foer, Jonathan, Eating Animals, (New York: Little, Brown, 2010)
Page 122, Position 3: 2.8 million American dogs are on antidepressants.: The Week, 29 Mar 2014
Page 122, Position 4: Babies can hear dog whistles.: Shields, David, The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead, (London: Penguin, 2008)
Page 123, Position 1: Dog yawns are infectious.: Provine, Robert, Curious Behaviour, (London: Harvard University Press, 2012), p. 20
Page 123, Position 2: You can tell if someone is yawning from their eyes alone.: Provine, Robert, Curious Behaviour, (London: Harvard University Press, 2012)
Page 123, Position 3: No one knows why we yawn.: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/14/health/14yawn.html?_r=0
Page 123, Position 4: Hamsters blink one eye at a time.: Symons, Mitchell, Numberland: The World In Numbers, (London: Michael O'Mara Books, 2013)
Page 124, Position 1: Hamsters can store half their own weight in food in their cheeks.: http://www.rspca.org.uk/allaboutanimals/pets/rodents/hamsters
Page 124, Position 2: Tomato frogs secrete a glue that causes a predator’s lips to stick together.: http://www.pet-frog.com/tomato-frog-for-sale.html
Page 124, Position 3: By the time they leave high school American children will have eaten 1,500 peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches.: http://nationalpeanutboard.org/the-facts/fun-facts/
Page 124, Position 4: Alan Shepard took a peanut to the Moon. When he brought it back, Steve McQueen tried to eat it.: http://articles.latimes.com/2008/nov/13/local/me-fiondella13
Page 125, Position 1: Astronauts’ hearts become rounder in space.: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140329175106.htm
Page 125, Position 2: Astronaut Harrison Schmitt is allergic to the Moon.: http://science1.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2005/22apr_dontinhale/
Page 125, Position 3: Astronaut John Young smuggled a corned-beef sandwich into space.: http://news.discovery.com/space/the-case-of-the-contraband-corned-beef-sandwich.htm
Page 125, Position 4: A third of British office workers have the same thing for lunch every day.: http://swns.com/news/millions-brits-lunch-day-36280/
Page 126, Position 1: British families throw away the equivalent of six meals a week.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24846612
Page 126, Position 2: Britons spend eight times as long watching television as they do cooking meals.: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/27/can-cook-wont-cook-tv
Page 126, Position 3: In spite of all the cookery shows on British television, the average Briton only knows four recipes.: The Week, 5 Apr 2014
Page 126, Position 4: There is a variety of carrot beginning with every letter of the alphabet except X.: http://www.carrotmuseum.co.uk/atoz.html
Page 127, Position 1: Vegetables are four times healthier than fruit.: Daily Telegraph, 31 Mar 2014
Page 127, Position 2: Corn, avocados, cucumbers, peas, beans and peppers are fruits, not vegetables.: http://www.fairchildgarden.org/uploads/docs/Education/Downloadable_teaching_modules/flower%20power/Fruit_classification1.pdf
Page 127, Position 3: A quarter of all the vegetables eaten in the US are French fries.: Shields, David, The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead, (London: Penguin, 2008)
Page 128, Position 1: The Aztecs wore necklaces made of popcorn.: http://www.culinaryarts360.com/index.php/history-of-popcorn-28676/
Page 128, Position 2: Unpopped popcorn kernels are called ‘old maids’ or ‘spinsters’.: http://recipes.howstuffworks.com/20-things-you-didnt-know-about-popcorn1.htm
Page 128, Position 3: A ‘singlewoman’ was medieval slang for a prostitute.: http://www.historyextra.com/news/tudors/revealed-secrets-tudor-cross-dressers
Page 128, Position 4: 88% of women routinely wear shoes that are too small for their feet.: http://www.healthyfeetstore.com/shoe-fitting-guide.html#sthash.xPIFDxzs.dpuf
Page 129, Position 1: British feet have grown by two shoe sizes in the last 40 years.: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jun/03/british-feet-longer-wider-say-experts
Page 129, Position 2: Our little toes were much stronger before shoes became widespread.: http://casualmaxx.wordpress.com/2010/06/26/100-shoes-facts/
Page 129, Position 3: In 1967, Picoazá, Ecuador, elected a brand of foot deodorant as the town’s mayor.: http://www.snopes.com/politics/ballot/footpowder.asp
Page 129, Position 4: New research shows that, for luxury brands, the ruder the sales staff, the higher the sales.: http://news.ubc.ca/2014/04/29/snobby-staff-can-boost-luxury-retail-sales/
Page 130, Position 1: Jaguars are attracted by Calvin Klein’s Obsession for Men.: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/thoughtful-animal/2013/10/10/youll-never-guess-how-biologists-lure-jaguars-to-camera-traps/
Page 130, Position 2: Termites like the smell of biro ink.: http://www.termite-control.com/methods/approaches/termites-pheromones-for-control/
Page 130, Position 3: An Atlantic salmon’s sense of smell is 1,000 times better than a dog’s.: http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/accounts/Salmo_salar/
Page 130, Position 4: There are one billion dogs in the world.: http://blog.oup.com/2014/03/one-billion-dogs-wildlife-conservation/
Page 131, Position 1: Every day, the human body makes 300 billion new cells, three times as many as there are galaxies in the universe.: http://www.rmg.co.uk/explore/astronomy-and-time/astronomy-facts/faqs/what-is-a-galaxy-how-many-stars-in-a-galaxy-how-many-stars/galaxies-in-the-universe
Page 131, Position 2: NASA estimates that the near-Earth asteroid, Eros, contains 20 billion tons of gold.: http://science.howstuffworks.com/gold8.htm
Page 131, Position 3: The opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics was the first time a billion people have watched a sporting event.: http://www.theguardian.com/media/blog/2012/jul/27/4-billion-olympic-opening-ceremony
Page 131, Position 4: At the 1932 Olympics, the 3,000-metre steeplechase was run over 3,400 metres because an official lost count of the number of laps.: Barrow, John, D. Mathletics, (Random House, 20 Jun 2013)
Page 132, Position 1: Croquet was dropped as an Olympic sport after 1900 because only one spectator turned up to watch.: http://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/stories/9-peculiar-summer-olympic-sports-that-have-been-discontinued
Page 132, Position 2: The first man to swim from John O’Groats to Land’s End grew a beard to protect his face from jellyfish stings.: The Week, 16 Nov 2013
Page 132, Position 3: Each person in a swimming pool leaves behind between 8 and 20 teaspoonfuls of urine.: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/03/chemists-decree-dont-pee-in-the-pool/359659/
Page 132, Position 4: 3,079 chemical compounds have been identified in human urine.: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24023812
Page 133, Position 1: Virtually all Koreans lack the gene that produces smelly armpits.: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=people-without-underarm-protection
Page 133, Position 2: The tobacco hornworm uses its terrible breath to fend off predators.: http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2013/12/31/Hornworm-uses-its-tobacco-breath-to-ward-off-predators/1031388500766/
Page 133, Position 3: Enough Polo mints are produced in one year to give everyone in the UK 114 each.: http://www.dentalhealth.org/approved-products/list/Polo
Page 133, Position 4: The first commercial chewing gum was made from spruce-tree resin.: http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/chewgum.htm
Page 134, Position 1: Only 1% of a tree is actually alive.: http://forestry.about.com/b/2013/08/06/how-much-of-a-tree-is-actually-alive.htm
Page 134, Position 2: The mortality rate of pop stars is 1.7 times higher than the average.: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/seriouslyscience/2014/04/16/study-determines-average-survival-rate-pop-stars/
Page 134, Position 3: One in nine Honduran men will be murdered.: http://media.economist.com/sites/default/files/media/2014InfoG/databank/IR2a.pdf
Page 134, Position 4: Boys in Bronze Age Russia had to slay their own dogs to prove they were ready to become warriors.: http://news.nationalgeographic.co.uk/news/2013/13/130514-dogs-sacrifice-initiation-rite-russia-archaeology-science/
Page 135, Position 1: There are more Internet hosts in Manhattan than there are in the whole of Africa.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/843160.stm
Page 135, Position 2: 88% of working adults in sub-Saharan Africa don’t have a bank account.: http://mentalfloss.com/article/55279/5-modern-banking-services-you-might-take-granted
Page 135, Position 3: Charitable donations of clothing to Africa have led to the collapse of its textile industry.: http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1987628,00.html
Page 135, Position 4: 40 million tons of dust are blown from the Sahara to the Amazon every year.: The Times, 11 Sep 2013
Page 136, Position 1: Lebanon is the only country in Africa or the Middle East that doesn’t have a desert.: http://simplybeirut.wordpress.com/2011/12/15/the-topography-of-lebanon/
Page 136, Position 2: The only desert in Britain is Dungeness Nature Reserve in Kent.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/safariandwildlifeholidays/7744750/Dungeness-nature-reserve-Secret-life-of-Britains-only-desert.html
Page 136, Position 3: Everyone on Palmerston Island, in the middle of the Pacific, speaks with a Gloucestershire accent.: http://www.cookislands.org.uk/palmerston
Page 136, Position 4: Accents in Britain change noticeably every 25 miles.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7843058.stm
Page 137, Position 1: Scotland has the largest bog in Europe.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=OvF3I6_2ZlEC&pg=PA191&lpg=PA191&dq=scotland+%22largest+bog%22&source=bl&ots=XiCDWZJWhG&sig=-q7CgmOkrzXpQwrbiPFWQIFUmwg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=YG0hVJDyMc6d7gaS74H4Ag&ved=0CEYQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=scotland%20%22largest%20bog%22&f=false
Page 137, Position 2: There are more stretch limos in Glasgow than in Los Angeles.: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/may/13/kevin-mckenna-stretch-limos-rule
Page 137, Position 3: There are more Catholics in Scotland than in Northern Ireland.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Catholicism_in_Scotland
Page 137, Position 4: In 2007, Scotland spent £125,000 devising a new national slogan. The winning entry was: ‘Welcome to Scotland.’: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/7114861.stm
Page 138, Position 1: In 2013, 6,000 papal medals were withdrawn by the Vatican after it was found they read ‘Lesus’ instead of ‘Jesus’.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/10370809/Vatican-pulls-medals-bearing-name-of-Lesus.html
Page 138, Position 2: ‘Bird’ was originally spelled brid.: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/11/pronunciation-errors-english-language
Page 138, Position 3: ‘Empty’ was originally spelled emty.: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/11/pronunciation-errors-english-language
Page 138, Position 4: ‘Misspell’ is one of the most commonly misspelled words in the English language.: http://grammar.yourdictionary.com/spelling-and-word-lists/misspelled.html
Page 139, Position 1: The number ‘2’ is known by 42% of Slovenian two-year-olds but only 4% of English two-year-olds.: http://www.popsci.com/article/science/why-babies-arabic-speaking-households-learn-some-numbers-faster
Page 139, Position 2: The word ‘twelve’ is worth 12 points in Scrabble.: Ross, Greg, Futility Closet, (Futility Closet, 2013)
Page 139, Position 3: Moving each letter of the word ‘yes’ 16 places further up the alphabet produces the word ‘oui’.: Ross, Greg, Futility Closet, (Futility Closet, 2013)
Page 139, Position 4: The words ‘ace, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, jack, queen, king’ contain 52 letters.: Ross, Greg, Futility Closet, (Futility Closet, 2013)
Page 140, Position 1: The largest known prime number is 17 million digits long.: http://www.theguardian.com/science/alexs-adventures-in-numberland/2013/feb/06/largest-prime-number-17-million-digitsa
Page 140, Position 2: The longest English word with all its letters in alphabetical order is ‘Aegilops’, a flowering grass whose name means ‘a herb liked by goats’.: http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/records-2000/longest-english-word-with-letters-arranged-in-alphabetical-order/
Page 140, Position 3: Google and Yahoo both use goats to trim their lawns.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/5297097/Google-hires-goats-to-cut-grass.html
Page 140, Position 4: Goats can’t cry.: http://www.famu.edu/cesta/main/assets/File/coop_extension/small%20ruminant/goat%20pubs/Facts%20About%20Goats.pdf
Page 141, Position 1: If you tickle a rat every day, it’ll start laughing as soon as it sees you.: http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/podcasts/neuroscience/show/20130720/nocache/1/?tx_nakscishow_pi1[transcript]=1
Page 141, Position 2: Rats can feel regret.: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/rats-are-capable-of-feeling-regret-scientists-say-9510038.html
Page 141, Position 3: Being lonely is as bad for your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1298225/Loneliness-killer-Its-bad-health-alcoholism-smoking-eating-say-scientists.html#ixzz2tfjQV41B
Page 141, Position 4: There are enough viruses on Earth to fill 150 Super Bowl stadiums.: https://what-if.xkcd.com/80/
Page 142, Position 1: The first Cannes Film Festival closed after only one night due to the outbreak of the Second World War.: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-cannes-film-festival
Page 142, Position 2: In the Second World War, Ribena was such an important source of vitamin C that two fake Ribena factories were built to confuse German bombers.: Buchan, Ursula, A green and pleasant land (Hutchinson, 2013)
Page 142, Position 3: During the Second World War, Lucozade was made from conkers.: Buchan, Ursula, A green and pleasant land (Hutchinson, 2013)
Page 142, Position 4: During the Second World War, the Polish army recruited a bear called Wojtek, a name that means ‘he who enjoys war’.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-15736812
Page 143, Position 1: In 1384, a 10-year-old Hungarian girl called Hedwig was crowned King of Poland.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jadwiga_of_Poland
Page 143, Position 2: Offa’s Dyke was built 200 years before King Offa was born.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-mid-wales-26921202
Page 143, Position 3: Cleopatra’s Needle was 1,000 years old when Cleopatra was born.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleopatra's_Needle
Page 143, Position 4: Seven US presidents were born in log cabins.: http://www.blueridgelogcabins.com/u-s-presidents-and-log-cabins/
Page 144, Position 1: For the last three months of his life, US President James Garfield had to be fed everything through his anus.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=2ZvQAQAAQBAJ&pg=PT519&lpg=PT519&dq=james+garfield+rectal+feeding&source=bl&ots=gMJ0IOdxh8&sig=Vbk77Uz67bfxZd83671M0RsU8Iw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ga2MU53xBomfO6vSgKAP&ved=0CGoQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q&f=falseÂ
Page 144, Position 2: George H. W. Bush wears socks with his own face on.: http://www.today.com/news/jenna-george-bush-sr-s-selfie-socks-evidently-he-likes-2D11699364
Page 144, Position 3: The first armoured presidential car was a Cadillac that had previously belonged to Al Capone.: http://www.theguardian.com/money/gallery/2009/aug/11/classic-cars-stars
Page 144, Position 4: In 1924, half the cars in the world were Fords.: http://melbournetomoscow.com/engcar.html
Page 145, Position 1: Half the world’s cork comes from Portugal.: http://www.fao.org/docrep/x5362e/x5362e03.htm
Page 145, Position 2: In Sweden, a Chinese burn is known as the ‘thousand-needle prank’.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_pranks
Page 145, Position 3: A man in China hired virtual assassins to kill his son’s World of Warcraft character so he’d stop playing.: http://www.businessinsider.com/father-hires-assassins-to-kill-sons-wow-avatar-2013-1
Page 145, Position 4: In 2013, police in the Maldives arrested a coconut on suspicion of vote rigging.: http://news.oneindia.in/international/bizarre-coconut-detained-over-vote-rigging-claims-in-maldives-1300944.html#infinite-scroll-1
Page 146, Position 1: In 2007, police in Iran detained 14 squirrels suspected of spying.: http://news.sky.com/story/526163/iranian-police-smash-squirrel-spy-ring
Page 146, Position 2: In 2012, the New Zealand government took legal action to prevent a couple calling their child Anal.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/newzealand/10029482/New-Zealand-says-no-to-bizarre-baby-names-4Real-Juztice-and-Lucifer.html
Page 146, Position 3: In the Norwegian town of Longyearbyen, it is illegal to die.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7501691.stm
Page 146, Position 4: In 17th-century Virginia, missing three Sunday Masses in a row carried the death penalty.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Wr_yPYvkNWwC&lpg=PP1&dq=%22soda+fountain%22&pg=PA64&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=sunday&f=false
Page 147, Position 1: In 19th-century Maryland, it was illegal to sell mineral water on a Sunday.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Wr_yPYvkNWwC&lpg=PP1&dq=%22soda+fountain%22&pg=PA64&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=sunday&f=false
Page 147, Position 2: In Singapore, it’s illegal to use a public lavatory and not flush it.: http://statutes.agc.gov.sg/aol/search/display/view.w3p;page=0;query=CompId%3Ae3c740f8-09b6-448c-a6a2-5843e9a34d8d%20ValidTime%3A20131025000000%20TransactionTime%3A20131025000000;rec=0
Page 147, Position 3: A 1571 law stated that all Englishmen must wear knitted hats on Sundays.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=soWN5njt4Y4C&pg=PA139&dq=1571+women+hats&hl=en&sa=X&ei=JyhaU8-CKufy7AbxyIAw&ved=0CE4Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=1571%20women%20hats&f=false
Page 147, Position 4: In 2013, a judge in Michigan found himself in contempt of court when his mobile phone went off during a trial.: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/09/hugh-clarke_n_4072981.html
Page 148, Position 1: Pasta is Spanish for ‘money’.: http://www.spanishdict.com/answers/217451/colgate-translation
Page 148, Position 2: ‘Trampoline’ comes from the Spanish for ‘diving board’.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trampolining
Page 148, Position 3: It is possible to travel by zip wire from Spain to Portugal.: http://www.travelandleisure.com/travel-blog/carry-on/2013/11/15/new-zipline-connects-spain-and-portugal
Page 148, Position 4: For 14 years during the Napoleonic wars, the capital of Portugal was Rio de Janeiro.: Symons, Mitchell, Numberland: The World In Numbers, (London: Michael O'Mara Books, 2013)
Page 149, Position 1: Tempura was introduced to Japan by Portuguese missionaries in the 16th century.: http://www.jfc.eu/en/japanese-food/your-favourite-menus/tempura/
Page 149, Position 2: George Washington is worshipped as a god by Japanese Shinto priests in Hawaii.: http://eos.kokugakuin.ac.jp/modules/xwords/entry.php?entryID=342
Page 149, Position 3: Harold Wilson was so poor when he was at university that his mother sent him meat in the post.: Sandbrook, Dominic, White Heat
Page 149, Position 4: Nick Clegg once did community service for setting fire to a rare cactus collection while drunk on a school trip.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Clegg
Page 150, Position 1: The world’s tallest statue, currently being built in India, is of a deputy prime minister.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/howaboutthat/10417899/Ten-of-the-worlds-tallest-statues.html
Page 150, Position 2: A third of adults in India play chess at least once a week.: The Economist 5 Oct 2013
Page 150, Position 3: Indians read twice as much as Britons.: http://mentalfloss.com/article/55344/which-country-reads-most
Page 150, Position 4: The average Briton has read fewer than half the books they own.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-26515836
Page 151, Position 1: Haile Gebrselassie, the Ethiopian distance runner, ran six miles to and from school each day. He still runs with a crook in his arm, as if he’s carrying his books.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haile_Gebrselassie
Page 151, Position 2: The Persians invented horse-riding and trousers.: http://www.iran-heritage.org/interestgroups/history-article3.htm
Page 151, Position 3: Mozart kept a fart diary.: http://www.wrightmusic.net/pdfs/mozart.pdf
Page 151, Position 4: 1 in 6 Google searches have never been searched for before.: https://www.tryinteract.com/blog/50-of-google-searches-have-never-been-made-before/
Page 152, Position 1: A ‘googolplex’ is a number so vast it can’t be written down: there’s not enough room in the universe for all the zeros.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googolplex
Page 152, Position 2: Google employees are encouraged to use a fifth of their time at work on their own non-Google projects.: http://www.wired.com/2013/08/20-percent-time-will-never-die/
Page 152, Position 3: Everyone has at least 50,000 thoughts a day but 95% of them are the same as the day before.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=DISkyQdS9msC&pg=PA33&lpg=PA33&dq=4000+%22thoughts+per+day%22&source=bl&ots=EkMAPuA3bY&sig=6IUj73atMgEuEiS5nOFL08-Cylk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=A4VWU72rOeSR0QXspoGgBw&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=4000%20%22thoughts%20per%20day%22&f=false
Page 152, Position 4: Three-quarters of Britons have a drawer at home full of miscellaneous junk.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/10129122/Old-birthday-cards-useless-gadgets-Britons-cant-part-with-their-junk.html
Page 153, Position 1: At the Vancouver Winter Olympics, the medals were made from recycled televisions and computer circuit boards.: Barrow, John, D. Mathletics, (Random House, 20 Jun 2013)
Page 153, Position 2: Azodicarbonamide is a chemical compound that makes things softer and bouncier, including yoga mats, flip-flops and the buns in Big Macs.: http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/bella/2012/12/mcrib_yoga_mat_fast_food.php
Page 153, Position 3: Dry cleaning was invented when someone knocked over a kerosene lamp and noticed it removed stains from their clothes.: http://home.howstuffworks.com/dry-cleaning1.htm
Page 153, Position 4: It’s impossible to set fire to a pool of petrol by throwing a lit cigarette into it.: http://www.scotsman.com/news/world/holy-smoke-a-cigarette-end-simply-can-t-set-petrol-alight-1-683783
Page 154, Position 1: The US Patent Office insisted on proof that the Ouija board worked before granting the patent in 1891.: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-strange-and-mysterious-history-of-the-ouija-board-5860627/
Page 154, Position 2: To save lives, Volvo gave away the patent for its seatbelt.: http://www.arnoldclark.com/newsroom/265-why-volvo-gave-away-the-patent-for-their-most-important-invention
Page 154, Position 3: One in four people killed on British roads were not wearing seatbelts.: http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/transport-environment/one-in-four-road-dead-not-wearing-seatbelt-1.1008012?localLinksEnabled=false
Page 154, Position 4: You are four times more likely to drown in your bath than you are to die of food poisoning.: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/scientists-calculate-odd-ways-die-282884
Page 155, Position 1: 95% of people don’t wash their hands properly before leaving a public toilet.: http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-06/only-5-percent-people-wash-their-hands-correctly
Page 155, Position 2: Japanese companies advertise on packs of tissues given out free at train stations, because the toilets there often don’t have loo paper.: Lonely Planet Tokyo
Page 155, Position 3: People with higher incomes generally prefer their loo paper to unravel over the roll, while those with lower incomes prefer it to go under.: http://www.buzzfeed.com/adamdavis/useless-facts
Page 155, Position 4: In the Second World War, British troops were issued with three sheets of toilet paper a day; American soldiers got 22.: Times Literary Suppliment, 21 Mar 2014
Page 156, Position 1: Jack Kerouac typed his novel On the Road on a 120-foot roll of paper in three weeks.: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11709924
Page 156, Position 2: According to the India Book of Records, the longest garland made of cattle dung was 1¼ miles long.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25881705
Page 156, Position 3: Modern fishing lines can be up to 75 miles long.: Safran Foer, Jonathan, Eating Animals, (New York: Little, Brown, 2010)
Page 156, Position 4: The 3.4 million coins in the longest-ever line of coins stretched for over 40 miles.: http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/records-1000/longest-line-of-coins/
Page 157, Position 1: The first coin minted in the US bore the slogan ‘Mind Your Business’.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugio_Cent
Page 157, Position 2: In the Great Depression, old tyres and fish skin were used as money in the US.: Smithsonian Magazine, Nov 2013
Page 157, Position 3: Two-thirds of all $100 bills are held outside the US.: http://www.wnyc.org/story/287390-most-100-bills-live-outside-the-us/
Page 157, Position 4: $1,200,000,000,000 of US money is in circulation, but nobody knows where 85% of it is.: http://mentalfloss.com/article/53616/mystery-missing-money
Page 158, Position 1: Most people walk 12 steps carrying a piece of litter before they drop it.: http://www.statisticbrain.com/littering-statistics/
Page 158, Position 2: 400 million gallons of raw sewage flow out of New York every year; the same as the volume of petrol Americans use every day.: http://seattletrekker.com/journal-entry/we-burned-400-million-gallons-of-gas-today
Page 158, Position 3: Mexican households generate 30% more rubbish than American households.: http://www.wisegeek.org/how-much-garbage-does-a-person-create-in-one-year.htm#slideshow
Page 158, Position 4: Sweden is so good at recycling that it has run out of rubbish and imports 80,000 tons a year from Norway.: http://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/recycling/blogs/sweden-runs-out-of-garbage-forced-to-import-from-norway
Page 159, Position 1: Sweden makes biofuel from dead rabbits.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8309156.stm
Page 159, Position 2: Pope Gregory I declared rabbit foetuses were marine animals and could be eaten during Lent.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurices
Page 159, Position 3: Pope Francis I used to work as a bouncer in a Buenos Aires nightclub.: http://news.sky.com/story/1177302/pope-francis-was-once-a-nightclub-bouncer
Page 159, Position 4: The Greek god Atlas had an aunt called Doris.: http://www.timelessmyths.com/classical/nymphs.html
Page 160, Position 1: Abraham Lincoln failed five times to get elected to Congress and the Senate before being elected president.: http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/lincoln-hub/lincoln-ten-facts/10-facts-lincoln.html
Page 160, Position 2: In 80% of US presidential elections the taller candidate has won.: McRaney, David, You Are Now Less Dumb, (Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated, 5 Aug 2014)
Page 160, Position 3: The Somali word for ‘president’ also means ‘big head’, and the candidate with the biggest head usually wins.: http://somalilandpress.com/recent-study-confirms-link-between-physical-features-of-somaliland-presidential-candidates-and-success-at-the-polls-27036
Page 160, Position 4: If a Hong Kong election ends in a tie, the candidates draw from a bag of numbered ping-pong balls.: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/world/2004-09-04-pingpong-politics_x.htm
Page 161, Position 1: Five years before he won Wimbledon, Fred Perry was world table-tennis champion.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Perry
Page 161, Position 2: Before he became a spy, John le Carré washed elephants for the Swiss National Circus.: http://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/cae/servlet/contentblob/364568/publicationFile/50331/ThinkGermanLeCarreEn.pdf
Page 161, Position 3: Before he became president, Bashar al-Assad was head of the Syrian Computer Club.: http://www.presidentassad.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=208:they-said-about-the-president&catid=84&Itemid=472
Page 161, Position 4: In 2013, a mobile-phone app allowing Azerbaijanis to track the presidential election reported the president’s massive victory 24 hours before the polls opened.: The Week, 19 Oct 2013
Page 162, Position 1: To be appstracted is to be distracted by an app.: http://nws.merriam-webster.com/opendictionary/newword_display_alpha.php?letter=Ap&last=40
Page 162, Position 2: The French equivalent of LOL is MDR: mort de rire – dead from laughing.: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=mdr
Page 162, Position 3: The 1989 article that proposed the acronym LOL also suggested using ‘H’ to mean ‘Huh?’: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/28/25-years-lol-good-bad-bits
Page 162, Position 4: The word ‘huh’ is understood in all known languages.: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0078273
Page 163, Position 1: Hawaiian, Icelandic and Zulu have given more words to English than Welsh or Cornish.: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/uk/article4020956.ece
Page 163, Position 2: When Columbus ‘discovered’ the New World, there were at least 50 million people living in the Americas.: http://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/0289.htm
Page 163, Position 3: Before humans reached Hawaii, the dominant animals there were giant ducks.: New Scientist, 1 Mar 2014
Page 163, Position 4: At the 1928 Olympics, oarsman Henry Pearce stopped to let a family of ducks cross his lane and went on to win the gold medal.: http://101olympians.blogspot.co.uk/2008/08/bobby-pearce-sculler-who-stopped-for.html
Page 164, Position 1: At the 1956 Olympics, Russian rower Vyacheslav Ivanov was so excited at winning gold that he dropped his medal into the lake and it was never found.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vyacheslav_Nikolayevich_Ivanov
Page 164, Position 2: Toshers were men who earned a living by searching London’s sewers for lost valuables.: Roud, Steve, London Lore
Page 164, Position 3: People in India panning for gold in sewers make four times the average wage.: http://www.geographical.co.uk/Magazine/Gutter_gold_-_May_13.html
Page 164, Position 4: ‘You have a turd in your teeth’ was a common insult in 17th-century England.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-24370981
Page 165, Position 1: The terms ‘Tory’, ‘Labour’ and ‘Prime Minister’ all began as insults.: Oxford English Dictionary
Page 165, Position 2: The House of Lords has a rifle range in the basement.: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/shortcuts/2013/jan/28/parliament-rifle-range
Page 165, Position 3: Membership of the Conservative Party has fallen by 97% since the 1950s.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/10546394/Europe-is-slowly-strangling-the-life-out-of-national-democracy.html
Page 165, Position 4: The surname Cameron means ‘crooked mouth’.: The Week, 14 Sep 2013
Page 166, Position 1: The facial expressions on Lego figures have become increasingly angry over the last 30 years.: http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-06/are-lego-figures-getting-angrier
Page 166, Position 2: A ‘rough and tumble’ was originally a boxing bout without any rules.: http://jmanly.ejmas.com/articles/2001/jmanlyart_gorn_0401.htm
Page 166, Position 3: In the 1890s, Samoan cricket matches had teams of up to 150 a side and lasted for over a fortnight.: Clay, Jeremy, A Burgler Caught by a Skeleton, (Icon Books, 5 Sep 2013) (citing The Gloucester Citizen, June 16th 1890)
Page 166, Position 4: Clinton, Montana, holds an annual testicle festival. Known as Testy Fest, it includes Ball Eating, Miss TestyFest, Itty Bitty Titty, Mr Fun Buns and Nicest Arms.: http://testyfesty.com
Page 167, Position 1: A manatee’s nipples are in its armpits.: http://mammalssuck.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/mega-mammal-milk-analysis.html
Page 167, Position 2: Despite producing milk, neither the platypus nor the echidna have nipples.: http://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/museums/2014/05/05/specimen-of-the-week-week-134/
Page 167, Position 3: Humans are the only primates with permanent breasts.: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/may/14/breast-size-evolution
Page 167, Position 4: The largest bra size is 48V.: Williams, F. Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History, (W. W. Norton & Company, 7 May 2012)
Page 168, Position 1: Male Dayak fruit bats lactate.: http://discovermagazine.com/1995/feb/fathersmilk468#.UQFgSnOLIi4
Page 168, Position 2: Breast milk is a laxative.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breast_milk
Page 168, Position 3: Women’s breast tissue ages faster than the rest of their bodies.: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24439-womens-breasts-age-faster-than-the-rest-of-their-body.html?#.UmZd1aUTPfY
Page 168, Position 4: Victorian slang for breasts was ‘Cupid’s kettledrums’.: http://www.fromoldbooks.org/Grose-VulgarTongue/k/kettledrums.html
Page 169, Position 1: People are more likely to co-operate with you if you give them something warm to hold.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2623841/Warm-hands-warm-heart-How-temperature-palms-affects-likely-cooperate-others.html
Page 169, Position 2: Koalas hug trees to keep cool.: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/koalas-hug-trees-to-keep-cool-say-scientists-9482444.html
Page 169, Position 3: Spider silk conducts heat better than most metals.: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120305132613.htm
Page 169, Position 4: Spiders seem bigger the more scared you are.: http://www.medicaldaily.com/spiders-appear-bigger-more-fear-239844
Page 170, Position 1: 1 in 6 Americans over seven feet tall are professional basketball players.: The Week, 14 Sep 2013
Page 170, Position 2: Joseph Goebbels was the same height as Lindsay Lohan.: http://www.celebritydetective.com/celebrity_height2.html"http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0324305/bio
Page 170, Position 3: In the 1980s, Hollywood planned a version of Doctor Who, starring Michael Jackson as the Doctor.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/doctor-who/10468029/Doctor-Who-50-things-you-didnt-know.html
Page 170, Position 4: The Daleks were based on the Nazis.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/doctor-who/10468029/Doctor-Who-50-things-you-didnt-know.html
Page 171, Position 1: In 2001, Southend-on-Sea had to redesign its new traffic-warden outfits when it was pointed out they were emblazoned with the letters ‘SS’.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1340871/Drivers-rebel-over-traffic-wardens-in-SS-uniforms.html
Page 171, Position 2: The first time Hitler and Mussolini met, Mussolini described Hitler as a ‘mad little clown’.: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/when-benito-mussolini-met-adolf-hitler-1317121.html
Page 171, Position 3: The clown Joseph Grimaldi was seen by 1 in 8 people in Victorian London.: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-history-and-psychology-of-clowns-being-scary-20394516/
Page 171, Position 4: Charles Dickens’s son Francis was a Canadian Mountie for 12 years.: http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/hist/hnud-nhut/did-faire-know-savez-eng.htm
Page 172, Position 1: Canada banned baby walkers in 2004.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3609723.stm
Page 172, Position 2: Pay toilets were banned in Chicago in 1974.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_to_End_Pay_Toilets_in_America
Page 172, Position 3: Skateboards were banned in Norway between 1978 and 1989.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=blH2--rIdoEC&pg=PT5&lpg=PT5&dq=Between+1978+and+1989,+skateboards+were+banned+in+Norway.&source=bl&ots=IHvMlRjMD0&sig=L4KyArnaW5B6U6Oz0sTLkQOYdgg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=cv5QU8iUHYSlPbfLgJgH&ved=0CGUQ6AEwBg
Page 172, Position 4: In 1948, a single law in Spain banned blasphemy, wood-chopping and keeping poultry.: The Week, 19 Oct 2013
Page 173, Position 1: There was a law in Sparta against having an unmanly complexion.: McKeown, JC, A Cabinet of Greek Curiosities, (Oxford: OUP, 2010)
Page 173, Position 2: King Archidamus of Sparta was fined for marrying a short wife because officials believed she would give birth to ‘kinglets’ rather than kings.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=HzeJbz7ybAMC&pg=PA197&lpg=PA197&dq=King+Archidamus+kinglets&source=bl&ots=2XqIitHVdR&sig=UUGlhSxsmtTfdtyU7WhiEjGgtaw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=7xlIU-7bF8e47QbyvYCYCg&ved=0CE8Q6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=King%20Archidamus%20kinglets&f=false
Page 173, Position 3: The jockey Frankie Dettori is four inches shorter than rugby player Tom Youngs, but only half his weight.: The Week, 12 Oct 2013
Page 173, Position 4: People eating in a group of seven or more eat twice as much as people eating alone.: Focus, Dec 2013
Page 174, Position 1: A newborn blue whale puts on 14 stone every day.: http://www.wcgs.org.uk/new/scienceblog/?p=245
Page 174, Position 2: Whales can’t taste anything but salt.: http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2014/05/whales-cant-taste-anything-salt
Page 174, Position 3: Full-fat milk contains only 3.5% fat.: http://www.milk.co.uk/page.aspx?intPageID=43
Page 174, Position 4: A one-year-old baby is 30% fat.: Shields, David, The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead, (London: Penguin, 2008)
Page 175, Position 1: A newborn baby sucks in air with 50 times the power of an adult.: Shields, David, The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead, (London: Penguin, 2008)
Page 175, Position 2: Over your life, you take 850 million breaths.: Shields, David, The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead, (London: Penguin, 2008)
Page 175, Position 3: Potato aphids will not have sex if they detect a drop in air pressure.: http://www.nature.com/news/amorous-insects-predict-the-weather-1.13874
Page 175, Position 4: The ‘soul-sucking’ wasp, Ampulex dementor, is named after the Dementors in Harry Potter because of the way it paralyses cockroaches.: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/the-dementor-wasp-new-species-of-insect-that-can-turn-cockroaches-into-zombies-named-after-harry-potter-character-9331583.html
Page 176, Position 1: The oldest-known parasitic worm was found protruding from the backside of a 25-million-year-old cockroach.: Piper, Ross, Animal Earth, (Thames & Hudson, 2013)
Page 176, Position 2: A nematode worm’s brain is shaped like a doughnut.: Piper, Ross, Animal Earth, (Thames & Hudson, 2013)
Page 176, Position 3: Penis worms do not have heads (or penises).: Piper, Ross, Animal Earth, (Thames & Hudson, 2013)
Page 176, Position 4: Beetles don’t have taste buds.: http://animals.sandiegozoo.org/content/arthropods
Page 177, Position 1: Adult burying beetles punish offspring who nag for food by eating them.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-23754861
Page 177, Position 2: Ancient Egyptian bakers who cheated their customers were punished by having their ear nailed to the door of the bakery.: http://www.villagebakery.co.uk/blog/bakery-blog/a-bakers-dozen/
Page 177, Position 3: The English word ‘dinner’ comes from the French word disner, meaning ‘breakfast’.: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=dinner
Page 177, Position 4: In Hindi, a chummery is a house shared by two or more bachelors.: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/chummery
Page 178, Position 1: In Geoffrey Chaucer’s time, a ‘cockney’ meant a spoiled child.: Marriott, Emma, I Should Know That: Great Britain (London: Michael O'Mara Books Limited, 2013.)
Page 178, Position 2: In the Middle Ages, the word ‘comical’ meant ‘epileptic’.: http://mentalfloss.com/article/51770/24-words-used-mean-something-negative"s: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=epilepsy
Page 178, Position 3: The longest bout of hiccups lasted 67 years.: Provine, Robert, Curious Behaviour, (London: Harvard University Press, 2012), p. 20
Page 178, Position 4: In the 15th century, English ‘sweating sickness’ killed thousands of people and then disappeared; nobody knows what it was.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweating_sickness
Page 179, Position 1: Periwinkles are used to cure leukaemia.: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/28/health/28leprosy.html?_r=0
Page 179, Position 2: In Greece between 1920 and 1983, leprosy was grounds for divorce.: http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=5&cad=rja&ved=0CGMQFjAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fceflonline.net%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2FGreece-Divorce.pdf&ei=0uj3Uoy-NM6AhAect4GwCA&usg=AFQjCNEu6SU4gtp0h6kcR6BqvWpw8KP-SQ&bvm=bv.60983673,d.ZG4
Page 179, Position 3: In 2013, the US Navy recorded its first case of scurvy since the Civil War.: http://www.duffelblog.com/2013/04/shore-sailor-stricken-by-navys-first-case-of-scurvy-in-150-years/
Page 179, Position 4: In Nelson’s navy, it took 2,000 mature oak trees to build a 74-gun ship.: http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-war&month=9910&week=b&msg=x1SlEXQOq5kWWS/DVaXAdA&user=&pw=
Page 180, Position 1: The modern Spanish Navy is still called the Armada.: http://www.armada.mde.es/
Page 180, Position 2: In spite of ‘women and children first’, men have been twice as likely as women to survive shipwrecks since 1852.: http://bigthink.com/Mind-Matters/in-a-shipwreck-your-heart-is-more-likely-to-go-on-if-youre-male
Page 180, Position 3: St Lucia is the only country in the world named after a woman.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_named_after_people
Page 180, Position 4: Rome has 7,575 streets named after men but only 580 after women.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17203823
Page 181, Position 1: 59 of the 60 oldest living people are women.: http://www.grg.org/Adams/E.HTM
Page 181, Position 2: The oldest person in the world dies, on average, every 8 months.: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-often-does-the-oldest-person-in-the-world-die-59484536/
Page 181, Position 3: The oldest you can be to go on a Club 18–30 holiday is 35.: http://www.club18-30.com/terms-and-conditions/
Page 181, Position 4: A quarter of unmarried Japanese 30-year-olds are still virgins.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-15915118
Page 182, Position 1: More than 50,000 people in Japan are over 100 years old.: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/sep/14/japan-centenarian-population
Page 182, Position 2: The average Japanese farmer is 70 years old.: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/07d4c8a8-7e45-11e3-b409-00144feabdc0.html
Page 182, Position 3: A common form of public apology in Japan is shaving one’s head.: http://www.examiner.com/article/pop-star-shaves-head-japanese-pop-star-s-apology-video-goes-viral
Page 182, Position 4: Most Britons say ‘sorry’ almost two million times in their lives.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6241411.stm
Page 183, Position 1: The first football rulebook in Argentina stated that a player who had been fouled could accept an apology rather than involve the referee.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=LGpArsi70DgC&pg=PA29&lpg=PA29&dq=first+football+rule+book+accept+apology+%22river+plate%22&source=bl&ots=wVwmpUAV85&sig=tyXN4wbn1iNEIpzg0K4814DOEzU&hl=en&sa=X&ei=iFpWU9nfCfKO7Qa48oHoCA&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=first%20football%20rule%20book%20accept%20apology%20%22river%20plate%22&f=false
Page 183, Position 2: Argentinians speak Spanish with a strong Italian accent.: http://ordinarytraveler.com/articles/why-you-shouldn-t-learn-spanish-in-argentina
Page 183, Position 3: In Washington DC, the Slovakian and Slovenian embassies meet once a month to exchange wrongly addressed mail.: http://www.slovak-republic.org/slovenia/
Page 183, Position 4: Slovenian men do twice as much housework as Italian men.: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/03/the-countries-where-men-do-the-most-housework/284276/
Page 184, Position 1: 80% of Italians aged between 18 and 30 live with their parents.: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/mar/24/dependent-generation-half-young-european-adults-live-parents
Page 184, Position 2: If Prince Charles becomes king, he will be the oldest monarch ever crowned in Britain.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/prince-charles/10320264/Prince-of-Wales-will-be-oldest-monarch-crowned.html
Page 184, Position 3: Prince Charles runs his car on biofuel made from wine.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1030611/Prince-Charles-converts-beloved-Aston-Martin-green-machine--run-English-wine.html
Page 184, Position 4: Wine can be ‘aged’ by passing it through an electric field for three minutes.: http://www.money.co.uk/article/1002327-new-technology-transforms-cheap-wine-into-vintage-quality-in-minutes.htm
Page 185, Position 1: A £5 bottle of wine tastes better if you’ve paid £45 for it.: http://www.cnet.com/uk/news/study-90-wine-tastes-better-than-the-same-wine-at-10/
Page 185, Position 2: If food prices had risen at the same rate as house prices over the last 40 years, a loaf of bread would cost £4.87.: http://england.shelter.org.uk/campaigns/building_more_affordable_homes/price_check\
Page 185, Position 3: 33% of the bread produced in the UK is wasted, compared with 6% of the alcohol.: http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/oct/05/bread-dough-facts-data
Page 185, Position 4: Alcohol costs 60% more in the UK than it does in France.: http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/oct/05/bread-dough-facts-data
Page 186, Position 1: 20 million barrels of whisky are maturing in warehouses in Scotland.: http://www.scotch-whisky.org.uk/what-we-do/facts-figures/
Page 186, Position 2: In 14th-century England, children were baptised in cider.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/herefordandworcester/culture/2002/05/bulmers.shtml
Page 186, Position 3: Wayne Rooney’s voicemail password was ‘Stella Artois’.: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/phone-hacking-trial-wayne-rooney-2784217
Page 186, Position 4: 1 in 10 passwords used on the Internet are either ‘Password’, or ‘123456’ or ‘12345678’.: https://xato.net/passwords/more-top-worst-passwords/#.UqWtihZedHg
Page 187, Position 1: The least common PIN number is 8068.: http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/09/19/how_to_choose_a_pin_code_avoid_birth_date_1234_or_8068.html
Page 187, Position 2: Alternative names considered for Twitter were FriendStalker and Throbber.: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/11/twitter-might-have-been-named-friendstalker/281380/
Page 187, Position 3: 85% of Twitter’s content comes from 15% of users.: http://adage.com/article/digital/facebook-85-users-creating-content/236358/
Page 187, Position 4: Half of all tweets are pointless babble.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8204842.stm
Page 188, Position 1: One-third of the population of China can’t speak the country’s official language.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-23975037
Page 188, Position 2: Only a fifth of the Sahara desert is sand.: Varasdi, J. Allen, Myth Information, (Ballantine, 1989)
Page 188, Position 3: At least a tenth of the population of Mauritania are slaves.: http://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2012/03/world/mauritania.slaverys.last.stronghold/index.html
Page 188, Position 4: Mississippi didn’t prohibit slavery until 1995.: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2013/02/mississippi-officially-abolishes-slavery-ratifies-13th-amendment/
Page 189, Position 1: The Tightwad Bank serves the town of Tightwad, Missouri.: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/17/AR2008081702195.html
Page 189, Position 2: Two-thirds of all bankruptcies in the US are caused by medical bills.: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100840148
Page 189, Position 3: More than 80,000 bartenders in America have university degrees.: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-17/end-u-s-student-loans-don-t-make-them-cheaper.html
Page 189, Position 4: As a nuclear-safety inspector, Homer Simpson earns $20,000 more than the average American.: http://www.indeed.com/salary/q-Nuclear-Safety-Health-Physics-Technician-l-Sangamon-County,-IL.html
Page 190, Position 1: Americans today work for the equivalent of one month more each year than they did in 1976.: http://www.psmag.com/navigation/books-and-culture/sundays-terrible-weekends-dying-80943/"http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:H.R.2564.IH:
Page 190, Position 2: There is a French law that stops people answering work emails after 6 p.m.: http://www.theguardian.com/money/shortcuts/2014/apr/09/french-6pm-labour-agreement-work-emails-out-of-office
Page 190, Position 3: Apple Inc. is worth more than Sweden, Poland or Nigeria.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17344386
Page 190, Position 4: The founders of Hewlett-Packard flipped a coin to decide which of them would come first in the company name.: http://www8.hp.com/us/en/hp-information/about-hp/history/hp-garage/hp-garage-timeline.html
Page 191, Position 1: Facebook is cited in one-third of UK divorce cases.: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2011/12/30/facebook-divorce-_n_1176480.html
Page 191, Position 2: A survey in Britain in 1943 found that the top tip for a successful marriage was ‘liking’ your partner.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24957664
Page 191, Position 3: The Nobel Prize-winning novelist Gabriel García Márquez was married for 55 years. Every day his wife Mercedes put a yellow rose on his desk.: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/17/us-garciamarquez-idUSBREA3F1LY20140417
Page 191, Position 4: The first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel and survive was a 63-year-old widow.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Edson_Taylor
Page 192, Position 1: Hurricanes with female names are deadlier than ones named after men.: http://www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8782.short
Page 192, Position 2: All New Mexico whiptail lizards are female.: http://www.statesymbolsusa.org/New_Mexico/reptilewhiptaillizard.html
Page 192, Position 3: The German phrase Eierlegende Wollmilchsau, literally, ‘egg-laying wool-milk-sow’, describes a woman who can do anything.: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/eierlegende_Wollmilchsau
Page 192, Position 4: In Saudi Arabia, it is illegal for women to enter hospitals unaccompanied by men.: http://www.arabnews.com/news/525696
Page 193, Position 1: Saudi Arabia has an official anti-witchcraft unit.: http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Saudi-Arabias-Anti-Witchcraft-Unit-breaks-another-spell
Page 193, Position 2: The last English woman tried for witchcraft was convicted in 1944.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Duncan
Page 193, Position 3: A quarter of philosophers believe in zombies.: http://www.moreintelligentlife.com/content/ideas/anthony-gottlieb/what-do-philosophers-believe
Page 193, Position 4: Winston Churchill was a druid.: http://www.druidry.org/druid-way/what-druidry/brief-history-druidry/history-modern-druidism
Page 194, Position 1: Jimi Hendrix was a paratrooper.: http://www.military.com/veteran-jobs/career-advice/military-transition/famous-veterans-jimi-hendrix.html
Page 194, Position 2: Madonna was sacked from Dunkin’ Donuts for squirting customers with jam.: http://money.ca.msn.com/savings-debt/gallery/17-people-who-got-fired-before-they-became-rich-and-famous?page=6
Page 194, Position 3: Sylvester Stallone was so broke before his script for Rocky was accepted that he sold his dog for $25. A few weeks later, he bought it back for $15,000.: http://www.endlesshumanpotential.com/sylvester-stallone-story.html
Page 194, Position 4: Pavarotti holds the world record for the most curtain calls: he bowed 165 times over the course of an hour.: http://www.scotsman.com/what-s-on/music/pavarotti-the-two-tenors-1-917722
Page 195, Position 1: Regardless of household income, children of authoritarian parents are a third more likely to be obese.: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140319165200.htm
Page 195, Position 2: 1 in 3 children can use a tablet before they can speak.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2478328/One-kids-use-mobile-phone-tablet-speak-sentences.html
Page 195, Position 3: Toddlers who tell lies early on are more likely to do well later in life.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10119297
Page 195, Position 4: Humans are born with a sweet tooth.: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2011/09/26/140753048/kids-sugar-cravings-might-be-biological
Page 196, Position 1: 80% of food has sugar added to it.: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-lustig-md/sugar-toxic_b_2759564.html
Page 196, Position 2: The caffeine extracted from decaf coffee is sold to soft-drinks manufacturers.: http://www.teaandcoffee.net/0708/feature.htm
Page 196, Position 3: Sugary drinks kill 180,000 people a year.: http://www.livescience.com/28040-sugar-sweetened-beverages-deaths.html
Page 196, Position 4: East African vampire spiders drink human blood by eating mosquitoes that have just bitten humans.: http://news.nationalgeographic.co.uk/news/2005/10/1011_051011_spider_vampire.html
Page 197, Position 1: Every three seconds, 50 million cells in your body die and are replaced.: The Times, 11 Sep 2013
Page 197, Position 2: A parking ticket is issued in Britain every four seconds.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2603693/Councils-issued-one-parking-ticket-FOUR-SECONDS-year-raking-255m-fines.html
Page 197, Position 3: The universe is expanding at 230 miles a second.: http://www.space.com/17884-universe-expansion-speed-hubble-constant.html
Page 197, Position 4: Clams can live for more than 400 years.: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/ming-the-clam-worlds-oldest-animal-dated-as-507-years-old-after-being-accidentally-killed-by-scientists-8942102.html
Page 198, Position 1: An 80-year-old’s fingernails grow half as quickly as a 30-year-old’s.: Shields, David, The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead, (London: Penguin, 2008)
Page 198, Position 2: Onychophagia is the technical term for biting your nails.: Oxford English Dictionary
Page 198, Position 3: People with a rare genetic disorder known as ‘immigration delay disease’ have no fingerprints.: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/08/110809-fingerprints-skin-disease-health-science-weird/
Page 198, Position 4: The expression ‘the big C’ as a euphemism for cancer was coined by John Wayne.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24985184
Page 199, Position 1: The first person to smoke in Europe was sent to prison for being possessed by the devil.: http://www.helpwithsmoking.com/history-of-smoking.php
Page 199, Position 2: Most people in the18th century only had a proper wash twice a year.: http://www.salon.com/2007/11/30/dirt_on_clean/
Page 199, Position 3: In the 19th century, circumcision was used to treat epilepsy, hernia, lunacy and paralysis.: http://dspace.ucalgary.ca/bitstream/1880/47498/1/2008_HMD_Skeldon.pdf
Page 199, Position 4: Manchester United Induced Addisonian Crisis is a rare medical condition involving heart palpitations during Man United games.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-16202590
Page 200, Position 1: 1 in 4 people have a hole in their heart.: New Scientist, 26 Oct 2013
Page 200, Position 2: The hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica is twice the size of Europe.: http://www.livescience.com/40609-ozone-hole-biggest-for-2013.html
Page 200, Position 3: The hole in a guillotine through which you stick your neck is called a lunette.: Oxford English Dictionary
Page 200, Position 4: The rules of golf once provided that if your ball hit your opponent, he would lose the hole.: http://www.ruleshistory.com/rules1812.html#9
Page 201, Position 1: Celine Dion owns a golf course.: http://celinedion2007.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/le-mirage.html
Page 201, Position 2: Bill Murray was once pulled over by the Swedish police for driving a golf cart under the influence of alcohol.: http://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/sep/11/bill-murray-60th-birthday-facts
Page 201, Position 3: In a 1776 version of the rules of golf, any ball falling in human excrement could be removed for a one-stroke penalty.: http://ruleshistory.com/rules1776.html
Page 201, Position 4: Golfers can get ‘golf ball liver’ from licking their balls.: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/hidden-hazard-in-licking-golf-balls-1261332.html
Page 202, Position 1: Alfred Lyttelton, the first man to represent England at both cricket and football, was killed by a cricket ball.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Lyttelton
Page 202, Position 2: William Hotten, who wrote the first dictionary of English slang in 1859, died after eating too many pork chops.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/10726944/Odd-Job-Man-and-Language-by-Jonathon-Green-review.html
Page 202, Position 3: Human flesh tastes like pork but looks like beef.: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/human-flesh-looks-beef-taste-more-elusive-180949562/?no-ist
Page 202, Position 4: 37-stone Les Price was made to buy two tickets for his flight from Ireland to England, only to find that the seats weren’t in the same row.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/10376714/37st-man-forced-to-pay-for-two-seats-on-jet-finds-they-are-rows-apart.html
Page 203, Position 1: Fat Man was the name of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_Man
Page 203, Position 2: You can burn 20% more fat by exercising in the morning on an empty stomach.: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130124091425.htm
Page 203, Position 3: Taking the stairs one step at a time burns more calories than taking them two at a time.: http://www.roehampton.ac.uk/News/One-step-or-two--Research-findings/
Page 203, Position 4: Having sex uses the same number of calories as there are in one small meringue.: http://www.dailylocal.com/article/DL/20130211/LIFE01/130219999
Page 204, Position 1: Medieval peasants ate twice as many calories as we do today.: http://people.eku.edu/resorc/Medieval_peasant_diet.htm
Page 204, Position 2: Medieval English surnames included Crakpot, Halfenaked, Swetinbedde and Gyldenbollockes.: Sunday Times, 25 Aug 2013
Page 204, Position 3: Viking names included ‘desirous of beer’, ‘squat-wiggle’, ‘lust-hostage’, ‘short penis’, ‘able to fill a bay with fish by magic’, ‘the man who mixes his drinks’ and ‘the man without trousers’.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2401710/New-book-reveals-UKs-bizarre-surnames.html
Page 204, Position 4: The Romans split France into ‘Trousered Gaul’ in the south and ‘Hairy Gaul’ in the north.: BBC History, Christmas 2013
Page 205, Position 1: Lewstery means ‘to bustle about like a lusty wench’.: Kacirk, Jeffrey, The Word Museum (Touchstone, 2000)
Page 205, Position 2: Leint is an old northern word meaning ‘to add urine to ale to make it stronger’.: Kacirk, Jeffrey, The Word Museum (Touchstone, 2000)
Page 205, Position 3: Leep is a Hindi word meaning ‘to wash with water and cow dung’.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=N_utAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT71&lpg=PT71&dq=Leep+is+a+Hindi+word+meaning+%27to+wash+with+water+and+cow+dung%27.&source=bl&ots=TAK1tsPrzD&sig=AY6G3IbVmV4pb9kJw1PEIn_pcvw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=XKMhVJmNLMLTaMfjgZgH&ved=0CCMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Leep%20is%20a%20Hindi%20word%20meaning%20'to%20wash%20with%20water%20and%20cow%20dung'.&f=false
Page 205, Position 4: Logodiarrhoea means ‘talking too much’.: Oxford English Dictionary
Page 206, Position 1: The human brain has enough memory to hold three million hours of television.: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-the-memory-capacity/
Page 206, Position 2: Ross from Friends celebrated his 29th birthday in three consecutive seasons.: http://friends.wikia.com/wiki/Ross_Geller#Age_and_Birthday"http://www.toptenz.net/top-10-fictional-worlds-ruined-by-real-life-math.php
Page 206, Position 3: Matt LeBlanc was down to his last $11 when he got the part of Joey in Friends.: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108778/trivia
Page 206, Position 4: In most countries, the most popular programme on TV is the weather forecast.: http://www.wmo.int/pages/themes/weather/index_en.html
Page 207, Position 1: Not one of the Star Trek TV shows or films contains the words ‘Beam me up, Scotty’.: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060028/trivia
Page 207, Position 2: The 1960s US TV show Lost in Space was set in 1997.: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058824/trivia
Page 207, Position 3: Fewer people have ever been in space than climbed Mount Everest last year.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk2Vaeg7F_c
Page 207, Position 4: For every 25 people who have reached the summit of Mount Everest, one person has died trying.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2152664/Everest-deaths-The-high-altitude-lunatic-asylum-human-compassion-sacrificed-personal-achievement.html
Page 208, Position 1: 47-year-old Mark Inglis climbed Everest in 2006, despite having no legs and one of his prostheses snapping in half at 21,000 feet.: http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-08-14/people/29884458_1_mount-everest-mt-everest-tallest-mountain
Page 208, Position 2: ‘Viagra’ is a combination of ‘virility’ and ‘Niagara’.: http://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21567330-anatomy-seminal-work-cross-bare
Page 208, Position 3: Tutankhamun was the only ancient Egyptian who was mummified with an erect penis.: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/king-tutankhamun-was-mummified-with-an-erect-penis-to-quash-religious-revolution-9037709.html
Page 208, Position 4: Tutankhamun’s parents were brother and sister.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutankhamun
Page 209, Position 1: ‘Double cousins’ share all four grandparents. This happens when a pair of sisters marries a pair of brothers.: http://mentalfloss.com/article/54486/11-little-known-words-specific-family-members
Page 209, Position 2: One in five marriages in the world are between first cousins.: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/faheem-younus/why-ban-cousin-marriages_b_2567162.html
Page 209, Position 3: One in 20 couples argue so much on their wedding night they fail to consummate their marriage.: The Week 19 Oct 2013
Page 209, Position 4: George IV got so drunk on his wedding night he passed out on the floor in front of the fireplace.: http://www.georgianindex.net/princewaleswedding/Prince_Wales_wedding.html
Page 210, Position 1: When Peter the Great found out his wife had had an affair, he had her lover’s head chopped off and presented to her in a jar.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=-Ag2bbYzgacC&pg=PA199&lpg=PA199&dq=willem+mons+head+in+a+jar&source=bl&ots=MS-DWOiUIu&sig=yCttzHl-5Nwi3oCXPfeSnvpGP7c&hl=en&sa=X&ei=uXhyUpbTCMaIiALUuIGoBw&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=willem%20mons%20head%20in%20a%20jar&f=false
Page 210, Position 2: In 2013, Al-Qaeda apologised for accidentally beheading one of their own men.: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/11/14/world/meast/syria-beheading-mistake/
Page 210, Position 3: More than twice as many people were guillotined by the Nazis as during the French Revolution.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/4730105/The-kindest-cutter-of-all.html
Page 210, Position 4: The first violence of the French Revolution took place at a luxury wallpaper factory.
Page 211, Position 1: Before having their chests cut open and their hearts pulled out, Aztec human-sacrifice victims were given a cup of hot chocolate.: http://fatpie42.livejournal.com/128831.html
Page 211, Position 2: As well as humans, the Aztecs sacrificed wolves, turtles, snakes, hummingbirds, woodpeckers and shellfish.: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/06/130617-aztec-offering-animal-tenochtitlan-templo-mayor-mexico-science-archaeology
Page 211, Position 3: In 2002, Norwegian footballer Kenneth Kristensen signed for third-division team Floey and was paid his weight in shrimps.: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/soccer/news/2002/09/20/norweigan_fish_ap/
Page 211, Position 4: Louis XIV ate 400 oysters on his wedding night.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Q6WcAiZ5fPkC&pg=PA108&lpg=PA108&dq=balzac+100+oysters&source=bl&ots=fxiS1z-Dc5&sig=lhQcHHG8zlYuKHjPOgQjerRFeuI&hl=en&sa=X&ei=OwdZU7TNCYXuOYzWgOgP&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=balzac%20100%20oysters&f=false
Page 212, Position 1: To improve their ability to swallow hot dogs, the International Federation of Competitive Eating is studying black holes.: http://www.geekosystem.com/eating-black-holes/
Page 212, Position 2: Slum dwellings made up 20% of the houses in London in 1949.: Grindrod, John, Concretopia, (Old Street Publishing, 8 Jul 2014)
Page 212, Position 3: It is illegal in Vancouver to build a new house with doorknobs.: http://www.vancouversun.com/touch/story.html?id=9173543
Page 212, Position 4: Brass doorknobs disinfect themselves in a process known as the oligodynamic effect.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligodynamic_effect
Page 213, Position 1: Bacteria live for only three hours on Croatia’s currency, the kuna, but for more than a day on the Romanian leu.: New Scientist, 14 Sep 2013
Page 213, Position 2: It is as difficult for a bacterium to swim through water as it is for a human to swim through syrup.: Scientific American Sep 2013
Page 213, Position 3: The world’s oceans contain 20 million billion tons of chlorine.: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/23/science/chlorine-swimming-pool-helper-has-a-checkered-past.html?ref=science&_r=3&
Page 213, Position 4: A chemical in ships’ paint causes female snails to grow penises and explode.: http://www.popsci.com/article/science/six-years-after-chemical-ban-fewer-female-snails-are-growing-penises
Page 214, Position 1: 4% of the sand on Normandy beaches is made up of tiny metal particles from the D-Day landings.: http://www.livescience.com/20760-omaha-beach-sand-day.html
Page 214, Position 2: Half the world’s population has a genetic mutation that makes Brussels sprouts taste extremely nasty.: Focus Magazine, Dec 2013
Page 214, Position 3: As a boy, Roald Dahl taste-tested new chocolate bars for Cadbury’s.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=-qBtdOS8glAC&pg=PA10&lpg=PA10&dq=roald+dahl+taste+tester+cadbury&source=bl&ots=zVJWAzXmgV&sig=XmmTlXDBgWCqnzuyBzE2qtd15F8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=buBHU7irL-y07Qbn8YHoCA&ved=0CE0Q6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=roald%20dahl%20taste%20tester%20cadbury&f=false
Page 214, Position 4: People who try to stop thinking about chocolate eat more of it than those who don’t.: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071026213538.htm
Page 215, Position 1: 1 in 5 British children think fish fingers are made of chicken.: http://metro.co.uk/2013/06/03/one-in-five-children-think-fish-fingers-are-made-from-chicken-3825959/
Page 215, Position 2: 1 in 5 kidneys donated in the US are thrown away because a suitable recipient can’t be found.: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/20/health/transplant-experts-blame-allocation-system-for-discarding-kidneys.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Page 215, Position 3: 1 in 5 people in 2005 admitted to taking Derbisol – a drug that doesn’t exist.: http://io9.com/have-you-ever-gotten-high-on-derbisol-1520473039
Page 215, Position 4: Wamblecropt is a 17th-century word for ‘indigestion’.: http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2013/oct/09/mark-forsyth-the-horologicon-top-10-lost-words
Page 216, Position 1: In Turkey, the word for ‘turkey’ means ‘Indian bird’.: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=turkey
Page 216, Position 2: The Indian word for turkey means ‘Peruvian bird’.: http://blog.dictionary.com/turkey/
Page 216, Position 3: In Greece, the word for ‘turkey’ means ‘French bird’.: http://blog.dictionary.com/turkey/
Page 216, Position 4: The Malaysian word for ‘turkey’ means ‘Dutch chicken’.: http://blog.dictionary.com/turkey/
Page 217, Position 1: The world’s largest chicken nugget is twice the size of the world’s largest chicken.: http://www.nj.com/hudson/index.ssf/2013/10/worlds_largest_chicken_nugget_on_display_in_secaucus.html#incart_m-rpt-1
Page 217, Position 2: The world’s largest water slide in Kansas City is taller than Niagara Falls.: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdKI6WS7ghE
Page 217, Position 3: The dish of the world’s largest single-aperture radio telescope is large enough to hold the contents of 357 million boxes of cornflakes.: Ross, Greg, Futility Closet, (Futility Closet, 2013)
Page 217, Position 4: The world’s smallest advert was stencilled onto a bee’s knee.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1035510.stm
Page 218, Position 1: Piranha soup is a popular aphrodisiac in Brazil.: http://soulbrasileiro.com/main/brazil/drinks-and-food/caldo-de-piranha/caldo-de-piranha/
Page 218, Position 2: Prunes were served as aphrodisiacs in Elizabethan brothels.: http://www.almanac.com/content/aphrodisiac-really-works
Page 218, Position 3: Marmalade was an aphrodisiac in 17th-century London.: http://www.historicfood.com/Quinces%20Recipe.htm
Page 218, Position 4: Frog juice, made by putting frogs in a blender, is an aphrodisiac in Peru.: http://www.betternutrition.com/natural-libido-increase/columns/askthenaturopath/1169
Page 219, Position 1: Before fridges were invented, Russians and Finns kept their milk fresh by putting live frogs in it.: http://discovermagazine.com/2014/may/27-milking-frog-skin
Page 219, Position 2: In 1998, a swarm of jellyfish in New Zealand killed 56,000 salmon in half an hour.: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/stung-lisa-ann-gershwin/1112822549?ean=9780226020105
Page 219, Position 3: The national bird of Peru is the Andean cock of the rock.: http://www.nhptv.org/wild/andeancockoftheRock.asp
Page 219, Position 4: The scientific name for a llama is Lama glama.: http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/accounts/Lama_glama/
Page 220, Position 1: The first jerky was called charqui and was made from llama.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charqui
Page 220, Position 2: Male llamas having sex make a strange gargling noise called an ‘orgle’.: http://seaworld.org/animalinfo/animal-info/animal-bytes/mammals/llama/
Page 220, Position 3: The French word for ‘sexting’ is textopornographique.: http://www.geekosystem.com/french-word-for-sexting/
Page 220, Position 4: The French for the constellation Ursa Major is ‘Le Casserole’.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=I3t6ssFSnRUC&pg=PA9&lpg=PA9&dq=French+call+the+big+dipper+the+casserole.&source=bl&ots=i8CQix8dHS&sig=oQ254AOW-l314UdVJ1IWOM1CAzs&hl=en&sa=X&ei=MeZHU5eMKO7A7Abh6IEg&ved=0CFYQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=French%20call%20the%20big%20dipper%20the%20casserole.&f=false
Page 221, Position 1: The word louche is French for ‘cross-eyed’.: Oxford English Dictionary
Page 221, Position 2: The French for ‘rehearsal’ is répétition.: http://dictionary.reverso.net/french-english/r%C3%A9p%C3%A9tition
Page 221, Position 3: In French episodes of The Simpsons, Homer’s catchphrase ‘D’oh!’ is dubbed as ‘T’oh!’: http://www.todaytranslations.com/blog/simpsons-sound-like-countries/
Page 221, Position 4: French names for trenches in the First World War included ‘The Snail’, ‘Place de L’Opéra’ and ‘Headache’.: Ourednik, Patrik, Europeana (London: Dalkey Press, 2005)
Page 222, Position 1: Due to a computer error in 1989 41,000 Parisians received letters charging them with murder, extortion and prostitution instead of traffic offences.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/the-filter/10483693/The-Unbelievable-Truth-can-you-sort-fact-from-fiction.html
Page 222, Position 2: In 2013, a PayPal computer error briefly made a man in Pennsylvania the richest person in the world.: http://articles.philly.com/2013-07-16/news/40592245_1_delco-man-credit-card-delaware-county-council
Page 222, Position 3: The richest man in Italy is Michele Ferrero, the maker of Ferrero Rocher.: http://www.forbes.com/profile/michele-ferrero/
Page 222, Position 4: The most common occupation for the wife of a millionaire is teacher.: http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0411/5-easy-steps-to-becoming-a-millionaire.aspx
Page 223, Position 1: The first man to pass the compulsory driving test in Britain in 1935 was Mr Beene.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/8762972/A-history-of-the-driving-test.html
Page 223, Position 2: Thomas Edison invented the tattoo pen.: http://edison.rutgers.edu/pen.htm
Page 223, Position 3: The man who invented the water bed was unable to patent it because it had already appeared in science-fiction novels.: http://www.techrepublic.com/article/geek-trivia-strange-waterbedfellows/
Page 223, Position 4: Titanic was the first movie made by James Cameron that didn’t include any mention of nuclear weapons.: http://www.buzzfeed.com/spenceralthouse/25-things-you-didnt-know-about-the-movie-titanic
Page 224, Position 1: Arnold Schwarzenegger earned more than £20,000 per word for his role in Terminator 2.: http://whatculture.com/film/10-insane-movie-facts-that-will-blow-your-mind.php/2
Page 224, Position 2: India’s Mars probe cost less than the movie Gravity.: http://boingboing.net/2014/02/17/india-sends-spacecraft-to-mars.html
Page 224, Position 3: The B-movie The Blob is based on a real-life police report from 1950.: http://www.fearnet.com/news/news-article/did-you-know-blob-based-true-story
Page 224, Position 4: The movie Blade Runner was based on a novel by Philip K. Dick. Director Ridley Scott never finished the book and Dick never saw the film.: http://www.neatorama.com/2014/01/30/Philip-K-Dick-Never-Saw-Blade-Runner-and-Ridley-Scott-Never-Finished-Reading-the-Novel-it-was-Based-on/#!t34Eo
Page 225, Position 1: The last film rented out by Blockbuster was the 2013 comedy This Is the End.: http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/nov/12/blockbuster-final-rental-this-is-the-end
Page 225, Position 2: The Domesday Book wasn’t known as the Domesday Book for a hundred years after it was written.: Marriott, Emma, I Should Know That: Great Britain (London: Michael O'Mara Books Limited, 2013.)
Page 225, Position 3: The Bible’s Book of Esther doesn’t mention God once.: Symons, Mitchell, Numberland: The World In Numbers, (London: Michael O'Mara Books, 2013)
Page 225, Position 4: There is no evidence that Geoffrey Chaucer ever visited Canterbury.: http://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryMagazine/DestinationsUK/Canterbury/
Page 226, Position 1: Not one of the 500 references to Geoffrey Chaucer written in his lifetime refers to him as a poet.: Times Literary Suppliment, 15 Nov 2013
Page 226, Position 2: The first collection of poetry published by the three Brontë sisters sold fewer copies than it had authors.: Dexter, Gary, Why Not Catch-21? (London: Francis Lincoln Limited, 2007)
Page 226, Position 3: Edgar Allan Poe received only $9 for the publication of The Raven.: http://www.eapoe.org/papers/psbbooks/pb19871e.htm
Page 226, Position 4: Houdini bought Edgar Allan Poe’s writing desk.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=NyEumvZL1QMC&pg=PA153&lpg=PA153&dq=houdini+bought+poe+writing+desk&source=bl&ots=GJe8t5m4su&sig=xttLc-fxhOpixzLvzAxEJPeUT8k&hl=en&sa=X&ei=hTBdU-CdA4SDO8m-gegP&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=houdini%20bought%20poe%20writing%20desk&f=false
Page 227, Position 1: The novelist Kurt Vonnegut ran America’s first Saab dealership.: http://inthesetimes.com/article/1726/
Page 227, Position 2: J. M. Barrie founded a celebrity cricket team with Arthur Conan Doyle, H. G. Wells, Jerome K. Jerome, G. K. Chesterton, A. A. Milne, Rudyard Kipling and P. G. Wodehouse.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=MquNyteI59cC&pg=PT134&lpg=PT134&dq=J.+M.+Barrie+godfather&source=bl&ots=e0re21Ymk4&sig=j4jn-YyphKGOHSLvODwjfIBRzVE&hl=en&ei=X2xBTrS7BcyhOs3QzKkJ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false.
Page 227, Position 3: Cricket was allowed under the Taliban, but applause by the crowd was banned.: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/may/18/worlddispatch.rorymccarthy
Page 227, Position 4: Russell Brand’s My Booky Wook is banned from Guantanamo Bay.: http://www.newstatesman.com/2013/12/why-russell-brand-banned-gitmo
Page 228, Position 1: All glossy magazines are radioactive.: http://www.orau.org/PTP/collection/consumer%20products/magazines.htm
Page 228, Position 2: Mouse sperm is bigger than elephant sperm.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/broadband/tx/elephant/sizequiz/index_textonly.shtml
Page 228, Position 3: The amniotic fluid in the human womb renews itself completely every three hours.: http://www.steadyhealth.com/articles/My_Pregnancy__The_Second_Trimester__2nd_Trimester__a921.html
Page 228, Position 4: The last entry in the official Scrabble dictionary is ‘zzz’.: http://www.scrabblefinder.com/z-letter-words/
Page 229, Position 1: William Morton, the father of anaesthesia, first experimented on himself but kept falling asleep before he could describe the results.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Yn0jBfxnr18C&pg=PA111&lpg=PA111&dq=william+morton+anesthesia+goldfish+dog+hen&source=bl&ots=HeBxGt4gmZ&sig=H0uao--8eDk3SOvPH37TFXojzhA&hl=en&sa=X&ei=M7eMU-7MMMvFPe2LgEg&ved=0CE4Q6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false
Page 229, Position 2: To sleep for one night in every bed in Las Vegas would take 288 years.: http://www.legendsofamerica.com/nv-facts.html
Page 229, Position 3: The Bloody Mary has been scientifically proven to be the best alcoholic drink to enjoy on an aeroplane.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/foodanddrinknews/10789937/Best-in-flight-tipple-The-Bloody-Mary.html
Page 229, Position 4: Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of radio, was the great-grandson of the inventor of Jameson’s Irish whiskey.: http://www.irishdistillers.ie/our-company/irish-distillers-history.html
Page 230, Position 1: It takes 700 grapes to make one bottle of wine.: http://www.winespectator.com/drvinny/show/id/5350
Page 230, Position 2: It takes a million cloud droplets to make one raindrop.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=cQBh93ibpscC&pg=PA161&lpg=PA161&dq=million+cloud+droplets+to+produce+one+raindrop&source=bl&ots=K32cItnIlW&sig=SMheVbK0rkBRRKw2yXHa62fUiLs&hl=en&sa=X&ei=BitdU5H8Ec7jO7XIgcgP&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=million%20cloud%20droplets%20to%20produce%20one%20raindrop&f=false
Page 230, Position 3: A planet called HD 189733b, 63 light years from Earth, is lashed by rain made of molten glass and 4,000 mph winds.: http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1312/
Page 230, Position 4: The word ‘weather’ originally just meant ‘wind’.: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=weather&allowed_in_frame=0
Page 231, Position 1: The Khasi Hills in India, once known as the wettest hills in the world, are now having to import water.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/2977169.stm
Page 231, Position 2: Khaki is Urdu for ‘dust’.: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/khaki
Page 231, Position 3: Although Australia is the driest inhabited continent, Australians use more water than anyone else.: http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2009/12/07/2764044.htm
Page 231, Position 4: The busiest polling station in Australian elections is in London.: http://www.australiantimes.co.uk/news/voting-polls-are-now-open.htm
Page 232, Position 1: Nobody won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1972.: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/facts/peace/
Page 232, Position 2: J. R. R. Tolkien was rejected for a Nobel Prize in Literature on the grounds of his ‘poor storytelling’.: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/01/06/tolkien-lord-of-the-ring-nobel-prize-rejection_n_1188684.html
Page 232, Position 3: Game of Thrones author George R. R. Martin adopted the ‘R. R.’ as a homage to Tolkien.: http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2014/mar/17/game-of-thrones-george-rr-martin-song-ice-fire
Page 232, Position 4: In 2012, 146 girls in the US were named Khaleesi.: http://www.usatoday.com/videos/news/nation/2013/06/26/2459399/
Page 233, Position 1: In 2012, five babies in the UK were named Sherlock.: http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2013-12-02/sherlock-enters-top-baby-name-list
Page 233, Position 2: Chinese fans of Sherlock call Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman ‘Curly Fu’ and ‘Peanut’.: http://metro.co.uk/2014/01/19/the-chinese-have-fallen-in-love-with-sherlock-and-benedict-cumberbatch-whom-they-call-curly-fu-4268744/
Page 233, Position 3: The leader of Brighton Council is called Jason Kitcat.: http://www.jasonkitcat.com
Page 233, Position 4: The original KitKat was an 18th-century mutton pie.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kit-Cat_Club
Page 234, Position 1: Ruth Wakefield, inventor of chocolate-chip cookies, sold her idea to Nestlé in exchange for a lifetime supply of chocolate.: http://www.women-inventors.com/Ruth-Wakefield.asp
Page 234, Position 2: Lava lamps were invented by an accountant whose hobby was making underwater nudist films.: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-history-of-the-lava-lamp-21201966/
Page 234, Position 3: For inspiration, D. H. Lawrence liked to climb mulberry trees naked.: http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/02/reviews/ackerman-poets.html
Page 234, Position 4: The world’s oldest living tree was already 100 years old when Stonehenge was built.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_trees
Page 235, Position 1: There’s a tree in South Africa so big that a pub has been built inside its trunk.: http://www.southafrica.net/za/en/articles/entry/article-southafrica.net-sunland-baobab
Page 235, Position 2: Palm trees are a type of grass.: http://www.tampabay.com/features/homeandgarden/ask-dr-hort-defining-palms-desiring-more-desert-cassia-getting-orchid/1198543
Page 235, Position 3: A grasshopper becomes more sociable if you stroke its hind legs.: http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/a-brain-chemical-changes-locusts-from-harmless-grasshoppers-to-swarming-pests
Page 235, Position 4: Removing a fruit fly’s front legs makes it bisexual.: Fan, et al. Cell 154; 89-102, July 3, 2013
Page 236, Position 1: Male fruit flies given alcohol develop homosexual tendencies.: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13136-randy-flies-reveal-how-booze-affects-inhibitions.html
Page 236, Position 2: Fruit flies take their time over difficult decisions.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-27518484
Page 236, Position 3: After mating, a pair of love bugs can stay stuck together, even in flight, for several days.: http://www.clemson.edu/cafls/departments/esps/factsheets/household_structural/lovebugs_hs44.html
Page 236, Position 4: Male woodlice can change sex but females can’t.: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v412/n6842/full/412012a0.html
Page 237, Position 1: Every leech has 18 testicles and two ovaries.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=bcdbAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA22&lpg=PA22&dq=leech+%22eighteen+testicles%22&source=bl&ots=uM9ny5unq_&sig=8LJl9TJYdMa-EHjDNTYQp7_v0jQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=h9MZU_iCG8WShgey7oC4Dg&ved=0CDoQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=leech%20%22eighteen%20testicles%22&f=false
Page 237, Position 2: The largest-ever leech was 18 inches long and went by the name of Grandma Moses.: http://invertebrates.si.edu/Features/stories/haementeria.html
Page 237, Position 3: There is a species of leech that can survive 24 hours in liquid nitrogen.: http://www.popsci.com/article/science/leech-can-survive-24-hour-submersion-liquid-nitrogen
Page 237, Position 4: A leech can take up to 200 days to digest a meal.: Kirk, Robert, Leech (London: Reaktion, 2013)
Page 238, Position 1: ‘Email’ is a 16th-century word meaning ‘enamel’.: http://interestingliterature.com/2013/11/14/ten-modern-words-with-older-literary-connections/
Page 238, Position 2: The Dutch Crown jewels are made of fake pearls, fish scales and coloured foil.: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/apr/30/king-willem-12-things-dutch-royal-family
Page 238, Position 3: The Pantone colour chart has 104 shades of grey.: http://www.pantone.co.uk/pages/pantone/colorfinder.aspx
Page 238, Position 4: Fifty Shades of Grey was originally titled Masters of the Universe.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifty_Shades_of_Grey
Page 239, Position 1: The first baseball gloves were flesh-coloured in case spectators noticed and accused players of cowardice.: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-invention-of-the-baseball-mitt-12799848/?no-ist
Page 239, Position 2: According to England’s leading brain surgeon, it is more dangerous to wear a cycle helmet than not to wear one.: http://www.cnet.com/uk/news/brain-surgeon-theres-no-point-wearing-cycle-helmets/
Page 239, Position 3: St George is the patron saint of England, leprosy and syphilis.: http://www.britannia.com/history/stgeorge.html
Page 239, Position 4: The largest sperm bank in the world does not accept donations from redheads because of ‘insufficient demand’.: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/nov/02/worlds-biggest-sperm-bank-denmark
Page 240, Position 1: Dormice are not mice.: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/169529/dormouse
Page 240, Position 2: Fish can yawn.: Provine, Robert, Curious Behaviour, (London: Harvard University Press, 2012), p. 24
Page 240, Position 3: Elephants tickle each other.: Provine, Robert, Curious Behaviour, (London: Harvard University Press, 2012), p. 167
Page 240, Position 4: The technical term for guffawing is gargalesis.: Provine, Robert, Curious Behaviour, (London: Harvard University Press, 2012), p. 173
Page 241, Position 1: The Norwegian word for smelly feet is tåfis, which means ‘toe-fart’.: http://blogs.sweden.se/expat/2011/10/09/14-swedish-words-that-give-me-the-giggles/
Page 241, Position 2: Conversesjukan is Swedish for foot problems caused by wearing trendy trainers.: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/mar/27/google-sweden-ogooglebar
Page 241, Position 3: It is illegal to wear a bikini in Barcelona, except on the beach.: The Times, 28 August 2013
Page 241, Position 4: Miniskirts are illegal in Uganda.: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/uganda-miniskirt-ban-protests-after-women-are-assaulted-and-forced-to-undress-in-public-9155773.html
Page 242, Position 1: It is illegal to take mineral water into Nigeria.: The Times, 28 August 2013
Page 242, Position 2: NEPA, the former Nigerian electric power authority, was popularly known as ‘Never Electric Power Anytime’.: http://talk.nycsubway.org/perl/read?subtalk=208763
Page 242, Position 3: From 1934 to 1948, the motto of the BBC was Quaecunque, Latin for ‘Whatever’.: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v30/n15/jeremy-harding/short-cuts
Page 242, Position 4: The original BBC licence fee cost the equivalent of 50p.: Daily Mail, 7th Sep 2013
Page 243, Position 1: The price the tooth fairy pays for a tooth went up by 42% between 2011 and 2013.: http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/221784081.html
Page 243, Position 2: Queen Victoria had jewellery made out of her children’s milk teeth.: http://www.royalcollection.org.uk/microsites/vanda/MicroObject.asp?item=23&themeid=2872&object=34730&row=22&detail=about
Page 243, Position 3: The Romans used powdered mouse brains as toothpaste.: http://manchesterhistorian.com/2011/10-things-you-never-knew-about-the-romans/
Page 243, Position 4: At the 2012 London Olympics, 55% of the athletes were found to have tooth decay.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-24298109
Page 244, Position 1: Lipstick in the US may legally contain lead, arsenic and mercury.: http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/lipstick.asp
Page 244, Position 2: At the court of Louis XIV women used lemons to redden their lips.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/5124936/Hangover-cures-from-pickled-eyeballs-to-citrus-armpits.html
Page 244, Position 3: The Romans used lemons as mothballs.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/5124936/Hangover-cures-from-pickled-eyeballs-to-citrus-armpits.html
Page 244, Position 4: Casanova used half a lemon as an improvised contraceptive.: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/pill/peopleevents/e_options.html
Page 245, Position 1: At 21, Mussolini was homeless and living under a bridge in Switzerland.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=8idketyUtbMC&pg=PA48&dq=mussolini+lived+under+bridge+switzerland&hl=en&sa=X&ei=N_wiVJKWCOySsQTcsYKIAw&ved=0CCAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=mussolini%20lived%20under%20bridge%20switzerland&f=false
Page 245, Position 2: Waterloo Bridge is called the Ladies Bridge because it was built mainly by women.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2364712/The-forgotten-heroines-built-Waterloo-Bridge-Historian-reveals-women-drafted-construct-The-Ladies-Bridge-WWII-got-credit-deserved.html
Page 245, Position 3: Kissing was banned in England in 1439.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=3i4LAQAAMAAJ&q=%22pins+in+their+mouths%22+tunnels+trains&dq=%22pins+in+their+mouths%22+tunnels+trains&hl=en&sa=X&ei=KKVLU8faI-LH7Abq5IGACA&ved=0CEgQ6AEwBA
Page 245, Position 4: It takes five people to extract semen from a vulture.: http://www.biolreprod.org/content/73/5/1039.full
Page 246, Position 1: In 1859, a moral panic swept America over young people playing too much chess.: https://medium.com/message/why-chess-will-destroy-your-mind-78ad1034521f
Page 246, Position 2: In 1937, ukuleles were banned in Japan on the grounds that they ‘weakened young people’s will’.: Sunday Times, 8 September 2013
Page 246, Position 3: In 1816, The Times warned its readers that the waltz was ‘a fatal contagion’.: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.04/war.html
Page 246, Position 4: In 1916, New Jersey banned the Charleston because it was thought to cause broken shins.: http://www.nytimes.com/2000/05/14/nyregion/jersey-when-nostalgia-was-worth-remembering.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
Page 247, Position 1: More than a third of all sick leave is taken on Mondays.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8347332.stm
Page 247, Position 2: Vaccinations don’t work on octopuses.: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/octopus-chronicles/2013/09/28/no-shots-for-the-octopus-its-immune-system-doesnt-remember/
Page 247, Position 3: Hermit crabs form gangs to steal shells from other hermit crabs.: http://www.geekosystem.com/hermit-crab-mobs/
Page 247, Position 4: The average haul per robber for a bank raid is £12,706.60.: http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/PressRelease/pressReleaseId-103737.html
Page 248, Position 1: If you earn £20,250 a year, you’re one of the world’s richest 1%.: http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/04/news/economy/world_richest/
Page 248, Position 2: In 2000, it cost $3 billion to sequence a human genome. By 2014, the cost had fallen to under $1,000.: New Scientist, 25 Jan 2014
Page 248, Position 3: In 1981, there were 2,420 Britons over the age of 100. By 2012, there were 12,320.: The Week, 5 Oct 2013
Page 248, Position 4: By 2050, 70% of people will live in cities.: New Scientist, 5 Oct 2014
Page 249, Position 1: Birds living in cities start the dawn chorus five hours earlier than in the countryside.: The Week, 12 Oct 2013
Page 249, Position 2: Alligators balance twigs on their noses, to lure birds looking for nest-building materials.: New Scientist, 28 Dec 2013
Page 249, Position 3: Dogs with ADHD make the best sniffer dogs.: Wonderpedia Magazine, Jan 2014
Page 249, Position 4: Only one dog was ever registered as a Japanese prisoner of war.: http://www.frankwilliams.ca/fgw/JudyStory.htm
Page 250, Position 1: During the First World War, German and Russian troops agreed a ceasefire and joined forces to fend off attacks by wolves.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_attacks#Europe
Page 250, Position 2: To make them less conspicuous, white horses in the British army in the First World War were dyed brown with food colouring.: Corrigan, Gordon, Waterloo: A New History of the Battle and its Armies
Page 250, Position 3: Aristotle advised Alexander the Great not to let his soldiers drink mint tea because it would make them think more of love than war.: Douglas Hill, Mark, The Aphrodisiac Encyclopedia
Page 250, Position 4: In the Hundred Years War, dead soldiers had their faces burned off with hot irons to prevent identification.: Geographical Magazine Nov 2013
Page 251, Position 1: London burnt down in 1077, 1087, 1132, 1136, 1203, 1212, 1220 and 1227, as well as 1666.: Howard, Rachel and Nash, Bill, Secret London: An Unusual Guide (Jonglez Publishing, 2009)
Page 251, Position 2: A search for ‘singular coincidence’ in the British Newspaper Archive brings up more than 10,000 articles.: Clay, Jeremy, A Burgler Caught by a Skeleton, (Icon Books, 5 Sep 2013)
Page 251, Position 3: On 17 April 2011, Emmanuel Mutai won the London Marathon. The next day, Geoffrey Mutai won the Boston Marathon. The two men are not related.: Barrow, John, D. Mathletics, (Random House, 20 Jun 2013)
Page 251, Position 4: In April 1971, the headmaster of a Japanese primary school found a new species of salamander in the school drains.: http://www.caudata.org/forum/f1173-advanced-newt-salamander-topics/f30-species-genus-family-discussions/f36-hynobiid-salamanders-hynobiidae/41731-i-hynobius-takedai-i.html
Page 252, Position 1: Bacteria remain eternally young.: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sex-death-kefir-lynn-margulis/
Page 252, Position 2: In 1899, Dr Horace Emmett revealed that the secret of eternal youth was injections of ground-up squirrel testicles. He died later that year.: Donaldson, William, Brewer's Rogues, Villains and Eccentrics
Page 252, Position 3: The world’s shortest snake is four inches long and often mistaken for an earthworm.: http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2008-08/worlds-smallest-snake
Page 252, Position 4: The curly part of a corkscrew is called the ‘worm’.: http://www.ehow.com/how_8212626_uncork-wine-bottle-using-corkscrew.html
Page 253, Position 1: Kiwi fruit used to be called ‘melonettes’.: http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/kiwifruit/page-2
Page 253, Position 2: Humans are not at the top of the food chain but near the middle, on a level with pigs and anchovies.: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/ist/?next=/science-nature/where-do-humans-really-rank-on-the-food-chain-180948053/
Page 253, Position 3: Dorothy Parker had a pet canary she called Onan because he spilled his seed on the ground.: Ross, Greg, Futility Closet, (Futility Closet, 2013)
Page 253, Position 4: Salvador Dalí had a pet anteater.: http://scienceblogs.com/thoughtfulanimal/2010/08/02/monday-pets-how-anteaters-deci/
Page 254, Position 1: Giant anteaters eat 30,000 ants a day.: http://animals.sandiegozoo.org/animals/giant-anteater
Page 254, Position 2: There are 1.6 million people in Manhattan and 1.2 billion ants.: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/symbiartic/2013/08/22/minorities-compared-to-ant-manhattan-residents/
Page 254, Position 3: The total amount of adrenaline in half a million people weighs 1∕30th of an ounce.: http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/2005-03/1110495260.Me.r.html
Page 254, Position 4: The richest 85 people in the world have as much money as the poorest 3.5 billion.: http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/jan/20/oxfam-85-richest-people-half-of-the-world
Page 255, Position 1: Sir Francis Drake left all his money to the poor people of Plymouth.: http://www.livescience.com/42443-historic-eccentric-wills-go-online.html
Page 255, Position 2: When Handel died, he left the equivalent of £86,000 to build a monument to himself in Westminster Abbey.: http://www.livescience.com/42443-historic-eccentric-wills-go-online.html#sthash.flkcJgKE.dpuf
Page 255, Position 3: The amount of money you get at the start of Monopoly (£1,500) is the current average weekly rent in central London.: http://londonist.com/2014/01/inner-london-average-rent-is-1500-per-month.php
Page 255, Position 4: In London SW3, £100 would buy you a piece of property the size of an Oyster card.: http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/interactive/2014/may/13/square-foot-property-price-london-map
Page 256, Position 1: One in 11 people on Earth earn their money from tourism.: National Geographic Magazine, Dec 2013
Page 256, Position 2: The Great Wall of China was funded by a state lottery.: Joel Mokyr, J. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History
Page 256, Position 3: The lottery of the Zimbabwe Banking Corporation was won in 2000 by the president of Zimbabwe.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/621895.stm
Page 256, Position 4: President Mugabe has been in power 50% longer than the lifetime of the average Zimbabwean.: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/zi.html"http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2014/02/daily-chart-12?zid=304&ah=e5690753dc78ce91909083042ad12e30
Page 257, Position 1: Saddam Hussein’s regime destroyed 90% of Iraq’s marshes.: Scientific American, Dec 2013
Page 257, Position 2: Members of the Yazidi religion of Iraq are forbidden to eat lettuce.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/8598970.stm
Page 257, Position 3: Varieties of lettuce include: Amish Deer Tongue, Drunken Woman, Midnight Ruffles and Red Leprechaun.: http://tatianastomatobase.com/wiki/Category:Lettuce_List
Page 257, Position 4: Nero ate leeks to improve his singing voice.: Davidson, Alan, The Penguin Companion to Food.
Page 258, Position 1: Edward II employed a ‘tumbler’ who fell off his horse to amuse the king for 20 shillings a time.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=eJwSAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA176&lpg=PA176&dq=%22edward+II%22+tumbler&source=bl&ots=Aq1yVQ7kDP&sig=v0FuctikILZ6OIdVjrpe0qkPz_8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=IAVIU_f4M-uy7AbVv4GABw&ved=0CEwQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=%22edward%20II%22%20tumbler&f=false
Page 258, Position 2: King Francis I of France hung the Mona Lisa in his bathroom.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=lavPTNCk2tYC&pg=PT50&lpg=PT50&dq=King+Francis+I+of+France+hung+the+Mona+Lisa+in+his+bathroom.&source=bl&ots=Xsph05u8aM&sig=rtIoTlegsyk1062dk5PUnqM53e8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=EtJSUr6ZLOWT0QX8h4CAAw&ved=0CEoQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=King%20Francis%20I%20of%20France%20hung%20the%20Mona%20Lisa%20in%20his%20bathroom.&f=false
Page 258, Position 3: Queen Elizabeth II had a special shelf installed in her car so there was somewhere to put her handbag.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1258857/For-sale-Queens-car-complete-customised-handbag-holder-lambskin-rugs-corgis.html
Page 258, Position 4: King Olav V of Norway preferred to travel by public transport.: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0645994/bio
Page 259, Position 1: John Lennon and George Harrison once got a bus across Liverpool to visit a man who could teach them the chord B7.: http://www.wingspan.ru/bookseng/myfn/bmiles01.html
Page 259, Position 2: Liverpudlians buy three times as many false eyelashes as the national average.: http://fashion.telegraph.co.uk/beauty/news-features/TMG10100863/The-make-up-map-of-England.html
Page 259, Position 3: In the 18th century, people with facial scars filled them in with lard and painted them over with white lead.: http://graceelliot-author.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/mouse-skin-eyebrows-short-history-of.html
Page 259, Position 4: Two teaspoonfuls of Botox are enough to kill everyone in Britain.: Pain, Pus, and Poison (BBC Four Television Programme)
Page 260, Position 1: A ‘quarter pounder’ weighs less than a fifth of a pound when cooked.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarter_Pounder
Page 260, Position 2: Mrs Beeton recommended boiling pasta for 1¾ hours.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=nbGKhxnpUDkC&pg=PA123&lpg=PA123&dq=Mrs+Beeton+boiling+pasta+for+an+hour+and+three+quarters.&source=bl&ots=U2c-1pOxqO&sig=hDNVHjoCFjsYD4N__bXQAoCfbVw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=oApIU9zuN42h7Aa_oYHwBQ&ved=0CEMQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=Mrs%20Beeton%20boiling%20pasta%20for%20an%20hour%20and%20three%20quarters.&f=false
Page 260, Position 3: Cornish pasties make more money each year than Tonga, Micronesia or the Cook Islands.: Western Daily Press, 6 March 14
Page 260, Position 4: Shemomedjamo is a Georgian word meaning ‘to eat past the point of fullness because the food is so delicious’.: http://www.language-museum.com/blog/2011/10/25/more-words-with-no-english-equivalent/
Page 261, Position 1: In Georgian, mama means ‘father’ and deda means ‘mother’.: http://translate.ge/
Page 261, Position 2: The Inuit word iktsuarpok means ‘to keep going outside to see if anyone’s coming’.: http://mentalfloss.com/article/28315/15-wonderful-words-no-english-equivalent
Page 261, Position 3: The Japanese word tsundoku means buying books and not getting around to reading them.: http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2013/05/17/necessary-words-and-other-news/
Page 261, Position 4: Gurkentruppe is German for ‘losers’: literally, an ‘army of cucumbers’.: Alter, Adam, Drunk Tank Pink
Page 262, Position 1: The world’s first nudist colony, founded in India in 1891, was called the Fellowship of the Naked Trust.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1465583/Naked-ambition.html
Page 262, Position 2: The expression ‘flash mob’ was first used in 1832 and meant a group of petty criminals.: http://mentalfloss.com/article/54310/12-new-words-added-oxford-english-dictionary-2013
Page 262, Position 3: Libya was the first country to issue an arrest warrant for Osama bin Laden.: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2002/nov/10/uk.davidshayler
Page 262, Position 4: The first ever webcam was in the computer lab at Cambridge University. It was trained on the coffee pot in the corridor to save the scientists making pointless trips when it had run out.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20439301
Page 263, Position 1: Coffee beans are actually seeds.: http://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/edible-innovations/coffee4.htm
Page 263, Position 2: Sunflower seeds are actually fruits.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunflower_seed
Page 263, Position 3: Fruits are the ovaries of plants.: http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/botany/fruit-info.htm
Page 263, Position 4: In order to be light enough to fly, birds have only one ovary.: http://www.nature.com/news/exquisite-bird-fossils-reveal-egg-producing-ovary-1.12616
Page 264, Position 1: Men with smaller testicles tend to be better fathers.: New Scientist, 14 Sep 2013
Page 264, Position 2: Ramajit Raghav became the world’s oldest father at 96 years old.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/9708619/Worlds-oldest-father-becomes-Peta-posterboy.html
Page 264, Position 3: At least 10% of all the adult cheetahs in the southern Serengeti have the same mother.: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2012/11/cheetahs/smith-text
Page 264, Position 4: A male cheetah can make a female ovulate by barking at her.: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/bigphotos/81122945.html
Page 265, Position 1: An elephant call can be heard anywhere within 100 square miles.: National Geographic Magazine Jan 2014
Page 265, Position 2: Elephants can tell different human languages apart.: http://www.livescience.com/44030-elephants-identify-human-voices-languages.html?cmpid=514645_20140312_19902224
Page 265, Position 3: Elephants have more muscles in their trunks than adult humans have in their entire body.: http://www.animalcorner.co.uk/wildlife/elephants/elephant_anatomy.html
Page 265, Position 4: Over 80 international brands feature the word ‘Maasai’. Collectively worth billions, none has sought permission from the Maasai people.: National Geographic Magazine Dec 2013
Page 266, Position 1: Nike’s ‘Just Do It’ slogan was inspired by the last words of a murderer.: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/20/business/media/20adco.html
Page 266, Position 2: Six streets in London had their names changed after murders took place there.: Bondeson, Jan, Murder Houses of London
Page 266, Position 3: The villains in Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Silence of the Lambs are all based on the same man.: http://www.houseofhorrors.com/gein.htm
Page 266, Position 4: In 2002, an American bomber attempted to plant 18 bombs which, when they exploded, would form a giant smiley face.: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/15/luke-helder-mailbox-bomb-_n_3281576.html
Page 267, Position 1: In 1552, Henry Pert died after shooting himself in the face with his own bow and arrow.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13762313
Page 267, Position 2: Head lice will die if they don’t eat six times a day.: http://www.liceworld.com/UK/biologi_levevis_fode.htm
Page 267, Position 3: Theodore Roosevelt thought it was a shame diplodocuses had died out: he’d have liked to hunt one.: http://old.post-gazette.com/magazine/19990702dippy2.asp
Page 267, Position 4: When a pope dies, his seals are defaced and his ring is split in two.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope
Page 268, Position 1: Sigmund Freud treated Gustav Mahler for impotence.: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/mahler-and-freud-understanding-mahler
Page 268, Position 2: A popular way to cure impotence in the 14th century was to wear your trousers on your head for 24 hours.: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_the_history_of_sexuality/summary/v020/20.2.whitney.html
Page 268, Position 3: The Duke of Wellington was kicked out of his club in 1814 for wearing trousers instead of pantaloons.: http://www.munseys.com/diskone/grnow.htm
Page 268, Position 4: ‘Extraordinary affair,’ said the Duke of Wellington after his first Cabinet meeting. ‘I gave them their orders and they wanted to stay to discuss them . . .’: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=6MTNmB0SJn0C&pg=PA255&lpg=PA255&dq=Extraordinary+affair+Duke+of+Wellington+After+his+first+Cabinet+meeting.'I+gave+them+their+orders+and+they&source=bl&ots=ocuXw2qdMv&sig=Jx1B-NsOiSCpXmOGqqbvV3RpumE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=9PoiVMSfEsP7sASemIBo&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=Extraordinary%20affair%20Duke%20of%20Wellington%20After%20his%20first%20Cabinet%20meeting.'I%20gave%20them%20their%20orders%20and%20they&f=false
Page 269, Position 1: The Duke of Wellington’s horse, Copenhagen, died from eating too many sponge cakes, bath buns and chocolate creams.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_(horse)
Page 269, Position 2: Przewalski’s horses, a rare, wild breed native to Mongolia, have never been domesticated.: http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/przewalskis-horse/
Page 269, Position 3: The two pandas in Edinburgh Zoo eat £40,000 worth of food a year.: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/dec/02/pandas-edinburgh-zoo
Page 269, Position 4: Pandas defecate 50 times a day.: http://animals.sandiegozoo.org/animals/giant-panda
Page 270, Position 1: In Bolivia, llama droppings are used to purify water.: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/02/0205_0205TVllamadung.html
Page 270, Position 2: Polluted water kills children at a rate equivalent to a fully laden jumbo jet crashing every four hours.: http://water.org/water-crisis/water-facts/water/
Page 270, Position 3: Since 1948, 100 planes have gone missing in flight and never been recovered.: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/13/plane-disappearances-brief-history
Page 270, Position 4: In the UK, one child goes missing every five minutes.: http://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/number-of-children-missing-in-london-up-by-a-third-8322791.html
Page 271, Position 1: It’s impossible to get lost in a labyrinth: unlike mazes, labyrinths have only one possible route.: http://www.diffen.com/difference/Labyrinth_vs_Maze
Page 271, Position 2: Fearing a German invasion, in 1940 Alan Turing converted his assets into silver ingots and buried them in Buckinghamshire. He spent the rest of his life failing to find them.: http://www.mkheritage.co.uk/mkha/mkha/projects/jt/tw/docs/198.html
Page 271, Position 3: 80% of all time capsules have been lost.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Time_Capsule_Society
Page 271, Position 4: 11,000 keys are lost on London’s Tubes and buses every year.: http://www.lbc.co.uk/look-rare-glimpse-inside-tubes-lost-property-office-79710/album/a_rare_look_inside_the_london_underground_lost_property_office/2146#30622
Page 272, Position 1: The Tube ride between Leicester Square and Covent Garden is 260 metres long, costs £4.30, and is the most popular journey among tourists.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/uk/london/9789966/London-Underground-150-fascinating-Tube-facts.html
Page 272, Position 2: Until 1900, visitors to Stonehenge were given chisels so they could chip off a souvenir.: http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/458/stonehenge.html
Page 272, Position 3: Gift is German for ‘poison’.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/yoursay/false_friends/german/be_careful__its_a_gift_englishgerman.shtml
Page 272, Position 4: Gift cards worth £240 million go unredeemed in Britain each year.: http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-2228891/Stores-pocket-240-million-gift-cards-shoppers-fail-spend.html
Page 273, Position 1: The Queen’s staff get to choose their own Christmas presents, which must be worth between £20 and £25.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1095089/Queen-cuts-Christmas.html
Page 273, Position 2: The Queen took her corgi, Susan, on her honeymoon.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/queen-elizabeth-II/8463906/The-Queens-birthday-85-facts-you-should-know-about-The-Queen.html
Page 273, Position 3: 1 in 4 American dogs are overweight.: http://www.livescience.com/40298-cats-dogs-overweight.html
Page 273, Position 4: People who kiss their dogs have lower blood pressure than those who don’t.: http://www.livescience.com/40065-dog-kisses-are-more-than-just-slobber.html
Page 274, Position 1: 1 in 5 people in Wales haven’t been kissed for a year.: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/uk/article4020956.ece
Page 274, Position 2: People who believe in luck are luckier than those who don’t.: http://lifehacker.com/5595104/the-science-behind-having-a-bad-day-and-how-to-solve-it
Page 274, Position 3: The chances of finding a four-leaf clover are 10,000–1.: http://www.lucky-four-leaf-clover.com/what.html
Page 274, Position 4: The most leaves ever found on a clover is 12.: http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/records-1/most-leaves-on-a-clover/
Page 275, Position 1: Frank Sinatra took a shower 12 times a day.: http://www.tmz.com/2011/06/02/frank-sinatra-barbara-memoir-book-ocd-shower-clean-obsessed-my-way-blue-eyes/
Page 275, Position 2: Months that begin on a Sunday will always have a Friday the 13th.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friday_the_13th
Page 275, Position 3: Stan Laurel was originally called Stan Jefferson. He changed his name because it had 13 letters in it.: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/919340/Laurel-and-Hardy
Page 275, Position 4: Stan Laurel once successfully cross-bred a potato with an onion, but couldn’t persuade anyone to eat one.: http://www.laurel-and-hardy.com
Page 276, Position 1: The racehorse Potoooooooo got its name from a stable-hand who couldn’t spell ‘Potato’.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potoooooooo
Page 276, Position 2: One-third of British potatoes are made into chips.: Marriott, Emma, I Should Know That: Great Britain (London: Michael O'Mara Books Limited, 2013.)
Page 276, Position 3: Two-thirds of the bagged salad sold by Tesco never gets eaten.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/10393981/Tesco-food-waste-Why-half-of-your-shopping-basket-may-end-up-in-the-bin.html
Page 276, Position 4: Nicknames for stinging nettles include ‘the devil’s leaf’ and ‘naughty man’s plaything’.: http://www.nhm.ac.uk/natureplus/blogs/wildlife-garden/2014/05/26/be-nice-to-nettles?fromGateway=true
Page 277, Position 1: The Forme of Cury, a 14th-century English cookbook, has a recipe for porpoise haggis.: http://friendlypolymath.com/2011/medieval-history-class-2/the-black-death-the-hundred-years-war-and-porpoise-haggis-medieval-history-notes-pt-3/
Page 277, Position 2: Archibald Clark West, the inventor of Doritos, had them sprinkled on his grave.: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/28/business/arch-west-who-helped-create-doritos-corn-chips-is-dead-at-97.html?_r=0
Page 277, Position 3: Plywood was invented by Alfred Nobel’s father: https://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Alfred_Nobel.html
Page 277, Position 4: Abraham Lincoln’s wife was an opium addict.: http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Addiction_of_Mary_Todd_Lincoln.html?id=-t-vvuyQlKEC&redir_esc=y
Page 278, Position 1: Dmitri Mendeleev was working as a cheese consultant when he had the idea for the periodic table.: https://blog.oup.com/2012/08/how-exactly-did-mendeleev-discover-his-periodic-table-of-1869/
Page 278, Position 2: In 2013, nine babies born in the UK were named Cheese.: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/12/cheese-baby-name-2013-babycenter-weird-names.html
Page 278, Position 3: Lady cheese is cheese made from human breast milk.: http://www.miriamsimun.com/human-cheese/
Page 278, Position 4: Cannibalism in the UK is legal.: http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/cannibalism
Page 279, Position 1: A 12½-stone man contains 110,000 calories.: http://what-if.xkcd.com/78/
Page 279, Position 2: People eat less in subdued lighting.: http://indianapublicmedia.org/amomentofscience/eat-dining/
Page 279, Position 3: The record number of live goldfish swallowed at a single sitting is 210.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=7aJVq5-ZkuEC&pg=PA213&lpg=PA213&dq=210+#v=onepage&q=210&f=false
Page 279, Position 4: The seventh most common sentence in The Hunger Games trilogy is ‘I swallowed hard.’: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-news/10468854/The-Hunger-Games-Harry-Potter-and-Twilight-most-popular-sentences-are-revealed.html
Page 280, Position 1: The fastest swallow in nature is that of the frogfish, which sucks its prey down in 0.006 seconds.: http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/weirdest-frogfish
Page 280, Position 2: The International Space Station travels at five miles a second.: http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/ask/282-How-fast-does-the-Space-Station-travel-
Page 280, Position 3: A day on the International Space Station is 1½ hours long.: http://science.howstuffworks.com/sleep-in-space2.htm
Page 280, Position 4: The universe is getting less blue and more red.: http://www.livescience.com/45211-the-changing-colors-of-the-universe.html
Page 281, Position 1: Martian sunsets are blue.: http://geonews.tamu.edu/latestnews/778-martian-sunsets-dusty-and-blue-not-like-earths.html
Page 281, Position 2: When humans first evolved on Earth, there was water on Mars.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolution"http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140425075025.htm
Page 281, Position 3: Craters on Mars under 60 kilometres in diameter are named after towns on Earth with populations under 100,000.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2579316/Mars-NOT-sale-Name-crater-scheme-against-equal-access-space-claims-Astronomical-Union.html
Page 281, Position 4: The first choice of a name for Disney’s Hannah Montana was Alexis Texas, but it was already taken by a porn star.: http://hannahmontana.wikia.com/wiki/Miley_Stewart
Page 282, Position 1: Before he started eating cookies, the Cookie Monster’s name was Sid.: http://mentalfloss.com/article/12611/43-sesame-street-facts-43rd-season
Page 282, Position 2: The name Chewbacca is from saboka, the Russian for ‘dog’.: http://mentalfloss.com/article/56801/15-chewbacca-facts-honor-peter-mayhews-birthday
Page 282, Position 3: Chewbacca’s voice was created by combining the sounds of a bear, a walrus, a lion and a badger.: http://mentalfloss.com/article/56801/15-chewbacca-facts-honor-peter-mayhews-birthday
Page 282, Position 4: Disney was sued by a biologist for defaming the character of hyenas in The Lion King.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lion_King
Page 283, Position 1: The mayor of the city of Batman in Turkey threatened to sue Warner Bros for not asking permission to use the city’s name in the Batman movies.: http://www.businessinsider.com/ridiculous-lawsuits-against-hollywoods-a-list-2012-5?op=1
Page 283, Position 2: To kit yourself out as a real-life Batman would cost about $300 million.: http://nypost.com/2008/07/14/you-can-be-batman-for-300m/
Page 283, Position 3: Christian Bale’s father’s uncle’s cousin was the Edwardian actress Lily Langtry.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=uR1dDiJH7xgC&pg=PA25&lpg=PA25&dq=lily+langtry+christian+bale&source=bl&ots=JBn4W9GjBS&sig=Oa5KesgR20R5OyQhRgeBuD8Ud6U&hl=en&sa=X&ei=CSZdU4u5JYiwO8vYgdAP&ved=0CEcQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=lily%20langtry%20christian%20bale&f=false
Page 283, Position 4: Clark Kent is two inches shorter than Superman; to finesse his secret identity he compresses his spine.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman_character_and_cast
Page 284, Position 1: When the infant Mozart first rose to prominence, some members of the Royal Society thought he was a dwarf in disguise.: http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/60/54
Page 284, Position 2: Mozart’s sister was also a musician, who sometimes took top billing as they toured Europe together.: http://www.mozartswife.com/nannerl.htm
Page 284, Position 3: As a child, Mozart was terrified of trumpets.: http://www.moderndaymozartian.com/2007/06/schachtners-trumpet.html
Page 284, Position 4: An ear trumpet is technically known as an otacousticon.: http://www.oed.com/;jsessionid=C6FA7CECF056A4B9AA1892627FCD45F0?authRejection=true&url=%2Fview%2FEntry%2F133206
Page 285, Position 1: A wheeple is an ineffectual attempt to whistle loudly.: Oxford English Dictionary
Page 285, Position 2: An ass-pipe is a musical instrument from the British Virgin Islands, made from a car exhaust and played like a tuba.: http://wiwords.com/tag/music
Page 285, Position 3: The izikhothane are a South African gang who meet in car parks, cover themselves in custard and burn wads of cash.: http://observers.france24.com/content/20130909-burning-money-thereâ€™-no-tomorrow-welcome-bizarre-world-'izikhothane'
Page 285, Position 4: ‘Bitch the pot’ was 19th-century slang for ‘pour the tea’.: http://somewhereboy.wordpress.com/2013/05/12/bitch/
Page 286, Position 1: Perfect coffee should consist of 17.42 units of water for every unit of coffee.: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/08/how-to-make-perfect-coffee/278944/
Page 286, Position 2: Swedes drink twice as much coffee as Americans.: http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2010/05/30/197396/the-nordic-passion-for-coffee/
Page 286, Position 3: In 1820, the average American drank half a pint of whisky every day.: http://www.pbs.org/pov/foodinc/omnivores.php
Page 286, Position 4: The longer a whisky is aged, the longer it takes for your body to get rid of the alcohol.: New Scientist, 28 Dec 2014
Page 287, Position 1: The average Belarusian drinks 17.5 litres of alcohol a year.: http://www.businessinsider.com.au/maps-showing-the-drunkest-countries-in-the-world-2014-9
Page 287, Position 2: Belarus has the same infant-mortality rate as Birmingham.: The Week, Nov 23 2013
Page 287, Position 3: Chemicals caused female munitions workers in the First World War to give birth to yellow babies.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2561630/The-war-children-born-YELLOW-How-women-working-explosives-factories-sparked-clutch-Canary-Babies-WW1.html
Page 287, Position 4: Bananas have more trade regulations than AK-47s.: http://politicsofpoverty.oxfamamerica.org/2012/06/comparing-bananas-to-the-global-arms-trade/
Page 288, Position 1: There are more species of plant on Cape Town’s Table Mountain than in the whole of the UK.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_Mountain_National_Park
Page 288, Position 2: Five times as many Cadbury’s Creme Eggs are eaten in Britain every year as there are people.: https://www.cadburyworld.co.uk/schoolandgroups/~/media/CadburyWorld/en/Files/Pdf/factsheet-easterbrands
Page 288, Position 3: A kiwi’s egg is so large it’s equivalent to a human mother giving birth to a six-year-old.: http://extraordinary-animals.com/2014/04/20/which-bird-lays-the-largest-egg-and-other-easter-related-mini-questions/
Page 288, Position 4: Dr Seuss wrote Green Eggs and Ham to win a bet with his publisher that he couldn’t write a book using just 50 different words.: http://www.snopes.com/language/literary/greenegg.asp
Page 289, Position 1: The French phrase au gratin literally means ‘with scrapings’.: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/au%20gratin
Page 289, Position 2: There are no mentions of salad in the Bible.: https://www.biblegateway.com/keyword/
Page 289, Position 3: You are more likely to believe a statement that is printed in bold.: Co-operative News, 5 Nov 13
Page 289, Position 4: Taking a photo of something reduces your ability to remember it.: The Week, 21 Dec 2013
Page 290, Position 1: 90% of people remember their first kiss more vividly than the first time they had sex.: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/jan/10/first-kiss-memory-study
Page 290, Position 2: A woman who is bitten by a cat has a 50% chance of being diagnosed with depression.: http://www.popsci.com/article/science/cat-bites-are-linked-depression
Page 290, Position 3: Chessington World of Adventures has banned animal-print onesies to stop the animals there getting confused.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-surrey-24240527
Page 290, Position 4: More than 60% of pandas born in captivity die within a week.: The Week 28 Sep 2013
Page 291, Position 1: The UK turtle-dove population has declined by 95% since 2005.: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/dec/09/decline-uk-countryside-birds
Page 291, Position 2: In 2013, 160 sheep were stolen from the Dorset village of Wool.: http://www.westerndailypress.co.uk/Village-Wool-stunned-theft-160-sheep/story-20034978-detail/story.html
Page 291, Position 3: In 1557, Robert Calf was mauled to death by a cow.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13762313
Page 291, Position 4: Tupperware was invented by a chicken salesman.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=VXNuZED4ibMC&pg=PT50&lpg=PT50&dq=Earl+Silas+Tupper++a+chicken+salesman.&source=bl&ots=wMXnUbGAeI&sig=SeNdCEiQ6xUaguUf7rCvuy525Io&hl=en&sa=X&ei=YMQiVOL8CKfCsAShoYDwDg&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=Earl%20Silas%20Tupper%20%20a%20chicken%20salesman.&f=false
Page 292, Position 1: Colonel Sanders’s career as a lawyer came to an end when he assaulted his client in court.: http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2019218,00.html
Page 292, Position 2: There is a law firm in Leeds called Godloves Solicitors.: https://twitter.com/GodlovesLegal
Page 292, Position 3: The real name of the rapper Aloe Blacc is Egbert Nathaniel Dawkins III.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloe_Blacc
Page 292, Position 4: ‘Yahoo’ is an acronym for ‘Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle’.: http://tech.ca.msn.com/the-16-strangest-tech-brand-names?page=9
Page 293, Position 1: Yoda’s first name is Minch.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoda
Page 293, Position 2: Woody from Toy Story’s last name is Pride.: http://www.bigscreenanimation.com/2009/08/woodys-last-name.html
Page 293, Position 3: Matt Groening’s mother was called Marge Wiggum.: http://articles.latimes.com/2013/may/07/entertainment/la-et-st-matt-groening-mom-marge-simpson-dies-20130507
Page 293, Position 4: The 2003 world poker champion who won $2.5 million for a $39 entry fee is called Chris Moneymaker.: http://www.chrismoneymaker.com
Page 294, Position 1: In 1910, a man called Morton Norbury was killed after an argument over who had the most handsome moustache.: BBC History Magazine, Dec 2013
Page 294, Position 2: In the 19th century, pious Spaniards grew moustaches in the shape of a cross.: BBC History Magazine, Dec 2013
Page 294, Position 3: Abraham Lincoln only had a beard for the last five years of his life.: Varasdi, J. Allen, Myth Information, (Ballantine, 1989)
Page 294, Position 4: Charles Darwin only grew his famous beard in his mid-fifties to relieve his eczema.: http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Rencher.pdf
Page 295, Position 1: Beard trimming is banned by the Bible.: http://leviticusbans.tumblr.com
Page 295, Position 2: The prophet Muhammad dyed his beard with henna.: Vitale, Alice Thoms, Leaves
Page 295, Position 3: The Paris Exhibition of 1855 had a life-sized picture of Queen Victoria made of hair.: de Dobay Rifelj, Carol, Coiffures: Hair in Nineteenth-century French Literature.
Page 295, Position 4: John Constable was 39 when he sold his first landscape painting.: Montague, Trevor, A-Z of Britain and Ireland
Page 296, Position 1: Picasso painted using ordinary house paint.: http://www.livescience.com/26963-picasso-house-paint-x-rays.html
Page 296, Position 2: The US army keeps Hitler’s watercolours in a high-security warehouse in Virginia.: http://www.buzzfeed.com/bennyjohnson/inside-the-armys-spectacular-hidden-treasure-room#2bj330h
Page 296, Position 3: Until the 1960s, there was a paint called ‘Mummy Brown’. They stopped making it when the manufacturers ran out of mummies.: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/ist/?next=/smart-news/ground-mummies-were-once-ingredient-paint-180950350/
Page 296, Position 4: The ancient Egyptians mummified beef ribs, sliced duck and goat meat to eat in the afterlife.: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/egyptians-mummified-the-beef-ribs-and-sliced-goat-meat-they-sent-on-with-their-rulers-to-the-afterlife-180947765/
Page 297, Position 1: The Great Pyramid of Giza was built by 100,000 people working 10 hours a day for 20 years.: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/who-built-the-pyramids.html
Page 297, Position 2: The ancient Egyptians invented the will and the business handshake.: http://www.ehow.com/info_8598985_history-handshaking.html
Page 297, Position 3: Ancient Egyptian lettuce contained the same active ingredient as cocaine.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactucarium
Page 297, Position 4: Old English medicines included ‘Allan’s Nipple Liniment’, ‘Grimston’s Eye Snuff’, ‘Miller’s Worm Plums’ and ‘Italian Bosom Friend’.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=GFmPAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA32&lpg=PA32&dq=%E2%80%98Allan%27s+Nipple+Liniment%E2%80%99,+%E2%80%98Grimston%27s+Eye+Snuff%E2%80%99,+%E2%80%98Miller%27s+Worm+Plums%E2%80%99+and+%E2%80%98Italian+Bosom+Friend%E2%80%99.&source=bl&ots=1fkHoWGi78&sig=WJ9rH8zGDNyMAE9qQoqHAkSUvVU&hl=en&sa=X&ei=BMYiVMSRB8i1sQTmt4LoBQ&ved=0CCUQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%98Allan's%20Nipple%20Liniment%E2%80%99%2C%20%E2%80%98Grimston's%20Eye%20Snuff%E2%80%99%2C%20%E2%80%98Miller's%20Worm%20Plums%E2%80%99%20and%20%E2%80%98Italian%20Bosom%20Friend%E2%80%99.&f=false
Page 298, Position 1: People suffering from superior canal dehiscence syndrome can hear their own eyeballs moving.: http://vestibular.org/superior-canal-dehiscence-scd
Page 298, Position 2: An ‘eye-baby’ is the tiny reflection of yourself in someone else’s eye.: Oxford English Dictionary
Page 298, Position 3: Reflectors on pedestrians’ clothing are a legal requirement in Estonia.: http://www.visitestonia.com/en/about-estonia/traveller-information/safety-tips
Page 298, Position 4: It is against the law for anyone in Barbados to wear camouflage.: http://www.visitbarbados.org/law-enforcement.aspx
Page 299, Position 1: Until January 2013, it was illegal for women in Paris to wear trousers.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/9845545/Women-in-Paris-finally-allowed-to-wear-trousers.html
Page 299, Position 2: Women called Eleanor are 100 times more likely to get into Oxford University than women called Jade.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26634477
Page 299, Position 3: ‘Chopsticks’ was written by a 16-year-old girl.: Lax and Smith, The Great Song Thesaurus (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984)
Page 299, Position 4: More than a million square feet of forest are used every year to make chopsticks.: http://boingboing.net/2013/03/15/eco-headline-of-the-week-disp.html
Page 300, Position 1: It is cheaper to send Scottish cod to China to be filleted and sent back again than to fillet the fish in Scotland.: George, Rose, Deep Sea and Foreign Going, (London: Portobello Books, 2013)
Page 300, Position 2: If you feed fish prawn-cocktail Skips, they turn pink.: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/fish-skips-giant-gourami-addicted-3189018
Page 300, Position 3: Only six out of 22 crocodile species present any danger to humans.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocodile
Page 300, Position 4: When Barack Obama visited Australia’s Northern Territory, he was given a $50,000 crocodile-attack insurance policy.: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-11-15/obama-given-croc-insurance/3673476
Page 301, Position 1: People will gamble more if they are holding a crocodile.: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20052606
Page 301, Position 2: Male chess players adopt riskier strategies when playing against beautiful women.: Alter, Adam, Drunk Tank Pink
Page 301, Position 3: Only 2,000 women in the world buy haute-couture dresses. It takes 2,200 seamstresses to make them.: http://fashion.telegraph.co.uk/news-features/TMG10147014/Haute-Couture-fact-file.html
Page 301, Position 4: In 13th-century France, it was illegal to sew more than 50 silver buttons onto your clothes.: http://invintaged.com/blog/2013/1/24/the-secret-lives-of-buttons
Page 302, Position 1: The Scottish Official Board of Highland Dancing says that under their kilts Scotsmen should wear dark underpants.: http://www.sobhd.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Dress-Code.pdf
Page 302, Position 2: In 1320, Scotland was excommunicated by the Pope.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/scottishhistory/independence/features_independence_arbroath.shtml
Page 302, Position 3: There are eight million Jehovah’s Witnesses on Earth but, according to their teachings, only 144,000 people will be saved at the end of the world.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jehovah's_Witnesses
Page 302, Position 4: Lloyd’s of London once offered reduced premiums for missionary ships because they had divine protection.: Marsden, Walter, The Lemming Year
Page 303, Position 1: In 2005, a Romanian murderer sued God for not doing enough to protect him from Satan.: http://en.ria.ru/world/20051018/41809986.html
Page 303, Position 2: The world’s best-selling genre of literature is self-help books.: New Scientist 01 Mar 2014
Page 303, Position 3: The most common sentence in the Harry Potter books is ‘Nothing happened.’: http://flavorwire.com/newswire/the-most-common-phrases-in-hunger-games-harry-potter-and-twilight/
Page 303, Position 4: The most common starting price of Grand National winners is 25/1.: http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/sport/other-sport/horse-racing/grand-national-betting---what-6919381
Page 304, Position 1: The most commonly awarded grade at Harvard is an A.: http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/12/the-most-commonly-awarded-grade-at-harvard-is-an-a/282020/
Page 304, Position 2: The most commonly asked question at Hanna-Barbera’s head office is: ‘What did Barney Rubble do for a living?’: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1994-06-12/entertainment/9406110105_1_barbie-susan-stamberg-timely
Page 304, Position 3: The first-ever comic strip was published at the suggestion of Wolfgang von Goethe.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodolphe_TÃ¶pffer
Page 304, Position 4: The original Popeye got his strength from rubbing a magic hen.: http://mentalfloss.com/article/54568/15-things-know-about-popeye-his-85th-anniversary
Page 305, Position 1: The DC Comics character Snowflame got his superpowers from cocaine.: http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Snowflame_(New_Earth)
Page 305, Position 2: Until 1916, cocaine and heroin could be bought over the counter at Harrods.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/legacy/thereporters/markeaston/2010/12/can_we_imagine_a_britain_where.html
Page 305, Position 3: Crisp packets aren’t full of air; they’re full of nitrogen.: http://mentalfloss.com/article/51993/why-are-potato-chip-bags-always-half-empty
Page 305, Position 4: Hula Hoops are not kosher.: http://www.kosher.org.uk/documents/NoshGuide08red.pdf
Page 306, Position 1: Orthodox Jews can buy kosher sexual lubricants.: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2013/jul/17/kosher-lube-oral-sex-jews-lubricant
Page 306, Position 2: The Hebrew for ‘usury’ is ribbit.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loans_and_interest_in_Judaism
Page 306, Position 3: Male Darwin frogs store their tadpoles in their vocal sacs, then cough up fully formed frogs.: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/14-fun-facts-about-frogs-180947089/
Page 306, Position 4: There is a drug made from the saliva of the Gila monster that stops you feeling hungry.: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120515165405.htm
Page 307, Position 1: Anole lizards do press-ups to get attention.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7745699.stm
Page 307, Position 2: If you fire lasers at the brain of a fly, you can make it have sex with a ball of wax.: http://www.nature.com/news/laser-beam-makes-flies-flirt-1.14794
Page 307, Position 3: 2014 was the International Year of the Salamander, the Family, the Secretary, and the Spine.: http://www.internationalyearofthespine.com"http://www.parcplace.org/news-a-events/2014-year-of-the-salamander.html"http://www.societyofvirtualassistants.co.uk/2013/12/06/international-year-of-the-secretary-and-assistant-2014/"http://www.family2014.org/home.php
Page 307, Position 4: In its first year, the human brain grows to 75% of its full size.: Shields, David, The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead, (London: Penguin, 2008)
Page 308, Position 1: Blackbeard was a pirate for two years.: http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2013/06/21/archaeologists-recover-two-more-cannons-from-blackbeards-ship/
Page 308, Position 2: Snails can sleep for three years.: The Times â€“ 11 Sep 2013
Page 308, Position 3: The British army’s Cyclist Corps lasted four years.: http://cycleseven.org/the-army-cyclist-corps
Page 308, Position 4: Five baby girls in the US in 2012 were named Cricket.: https://github.com/hstove/gender/blob/master/names/yob2012.txt
Page 309, Position 1: Baby chickens use their right eye to look for food and their left eye to look out for predators.: New Scientist 3 Aug 2013
Page 309, Position 2: A baby porcupine is called a porcupette.: http://www.pueblozoo.org/#!Pair-of-African-Crested-Porcupettes-born-at-Pueblo-Zoo/cdhr/31C350A7-3AAA-4B2A-BFC1-1A45CD93D551
Page 309, Position 3: The genome of wheat is five times larger than the human genome.: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/27/wheat-dna-cracked-by-scie_n_696801.html
Page 309, Position 4: Before the invention of electricity, human beings slept for 90 minutes longer than they do now.: http://www.history.com/news/history-lists/11-innovations-that-changed-history
Page 310, Position 1: Elizabeth I always slept with another woman in her bed.: Times Literary Supplement, 20 Sep 2013
Page 310, Position 2: Elizabeth I owned 3,000 dresses and the world’s first wire coat hanger.: http://www.theguardian.com/film/2008/may/25/biography.film
Page 310, Position 3: Elizabeth I invented gingerbread men.: http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1350&dat=19401218&id=PMspAAAAIBAJ&sjid=e_4DAAAAIBAJ&pg=7268,3020349
Page 310, Position 4: Robert Louis Stevenson dreamt the plot of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.: http://www.brilliantdreams.com/product/famous-dreams.htm
Page 311, Position 1: Joseph Conrad died leaving an unfinished novel called Suspense.: http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2912861?uid=3738032&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=21104041619043
Page 311, Position 2: It took 17 takes for E. B. White to record the death scene for the audiobook of Charlotte’s Web without breaking down.: http://www.wbur.org/npr/162735079/some-book-charlottes-web-turns-60
Page 311, Position 3: Hugh Hefner has someone preselect his potato chips so he doesn’t have to eat broken ones.: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/06/magazine/06Hefner-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&
Page 311, Position 4: Franz Kafka liked to exercise naked in front of the window.: http://mentalfloss.com/article/54417/incredible-eccentricities-20-great-writers
Page 312, Position 1: Humans are the only animals that blush.: http://www.livescience.com/15689-evolution-human-special-species.html
Page 312, Position 2: Snakes don’t have eyelids.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake
Page 312, Position 3: Whales get tan lines.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23882667
Page 312, Position 4: Ants don’t have ears.: http://www.pestworldforkids.org/ants.html
Page 313, Position 1: All the ants in the world weigh about the same as all the people.: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/edward-o-wilsons-new-take-on-human-nature-160810520/
Page 313, Position 2: There are more stars in the universe than words have been spoken by all of the humans who have ever lived.: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2013/10/08/10-sublime-wonders-of-science/
Page 313, Position 3: It would take 225 million years to walk a light year.: http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-%2526-space/article/2008-08/how-long-would-it-take-walk-light-year
Page 313, Position 4: Swinging your arms when walking makes it 12% easier.: http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/why-we-swing-our-arms-when-we-walk/
Page 314, Position 1: 70% of all train journeys in England start or finish in London.: http://londonfirst.co.uk/our-focus/londons-transport-infrastructure/rail/
Page 314, Position 2: The London Underground was originally intended to terminate in Paris.: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130108122724.htm
Page 314, Position 3: In 2014, a single parking space in London was sold for £400,000.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/10635036/UKs-most-expensive-parking-space-sold-for-400000.html
Page 314, Position 4: Spitalfields in London used to be known as Lolsworth.: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Spitalfields&oldid=593224732#Toponymy
Page 315, Position 1: Archers Way in Doncaster was formerly called Butt Hole Road.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/7981651/Bladder-Lane-Bent-Street-and-Butt-Hole-Road-the-street-names-that-reached-the-end-of-the-road.html
Page 315, Position 2: The first T-shirt was aimed at bachelors who couldn’t sew on buttons.: http://www.manmadediy.com/users/chris/posts/2685-the-surprisingly-fascinating-history-of-the-t-shirt
Page 315, Position 3: Charles Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton invented underwater spectacles so he could read in the bath.: http://www.theguardian.com/life/opinion/story/0,,1275964,00.html
Page 315, Position 4: After getting out of the bath, the ancient Greeks covered themselves with olive oil.: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=CdLbAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA30&lpg=PA30&dq=archimedes+oiled+skin&source=bl&ots=fwVP3bGHF2&sig=ZG9XhUnUZCcS5TFS5Mezg0Agjc4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=t-pPU4f_GqbB0QWpn4GAAQ&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=archimedes%20oiled%20skin&f=false
Page 316, Position 1: If everyone washed their hands properly with soap, it would save 600,000 lives a year.: Times Literary Supplement, 28 Mar 2013
Page 316, Position 2: Every year, around 3,000 people get bubonic plague.: The Week, 7 Sep 2013
Page 316, Position 3: Medical mistakes kill enough Americans each week to fill four 747s.: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10000872396390444620104578008263334441352
Page 316, Position 4: 13 Americans have died as a result of laxative overdose.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2538731/Taking-just-one-laxatives-kill-Health-watchdog-warns-counter-drugs-cause-dehydration-kidney-failure.html
Page 317, Position 1: If the US national debt were stacked in $5 bills, it would reach three-quarters of the way to the Moon.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1390090/One-giant-debt-mankind-U-S-national-deficit-reach-moon-piled-high-5-bills.html
Page 317, Position 2: If Bill Gates gave his entire fortune to the US government, it would only cover the national deficit for 15 days.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1390090/One-giant-debt-mankind-U-S-national-deficit-reach-moon-piled-high-5-bills.html
Page 317, Position 3: If you have no debts and £10 in your pocket, you are wealthier than a quarter of Americans.: http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2011/12/14/six-waltons-have-more-wealth-than-the-bottom-30-of-americans/
Page 317, Position 4: The Pentagon is successfully hacked 250,000 times a year, and unsuccessfully hacked 10 million times a day.: http://www.infosecisland.com/blogview/20743-Pentagon-Networks-Hacked-250000-Per-Year.html
Page 318, Position 1: 28% of Americans believe a secret elite is conspiring to run the world.: http://news.msn.com/us/americans-believe-in-lizard-people-new-world-order-poll
Page 318, Position 2: 70% of the silent movies made in America have been lost.: http://www.popsci.com/article/technology/70-percent-americas-silent-films-are-gone
Page 318, Position 3: The cross-eyed silent-film comedian Ben Turpin had his eyes insured against uncrossing.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd's_of_London
Page 318, Position 4: None of an octopus’s limbs knows what any of the others are doing.: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21829214.700-new-type-of-stem-cell-helps-your-fingers-regenerate.html#.U1I5raWuffY
Page 319, Position 1: The Lord of the Rings holds the record for the greatest number of false feet used in a single movie: 60,000.: http://www.moviemistakes.com/film1778/trivia
Page 319, Position 2: The cast of Riverdance have worn out 14,000 pairs of shoes.: http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2010/oct/13/riverdance-16-years-old
Page 319, Position 3: The V&A Museum has a 1,500-year-old pair of socks designed to be worn with sandals.: http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O107787/pair-of-socks-unknown/
Page 319, Position 4: The world’s first GPS shoes are activated by clicking the heels three times.: http://dominicwilcox.com/portfolio/gpsshoe/
Page 320, Position 1: Shoes with five eyelets on each side can be laced up 51,840 different ways.: http://www.qedcat.com/articles/lacing.pdf
Page 320, Position 2: There are 177,147 ways to tie a tie.: http://www.popsci.com/article/science/there-are-177147-ways-tie-tie
Page 320, Position 3: In imperial Japan, high-born women peed standing-up so as not to crease their kimonos.: http://www.researchpod.co.uk/pdf/making_a_stand_to_take_a_pee.pdf
Page 320, Position 4: Louis XIV announced his engagement from the lavatory.: Hart Davis, Adam, Thunder, flush & Thomas Crapper (Chalford, 1997)
Page 321, Position 1: At Stalin’s funeral 500 people were trampled to death.: http://stalin.narod.ru
Page 321, Position 2: Of the 142 million deaths caused by an ideology in the 20th century 94 million were due to communism.: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/20th-century-death/
Page 321, Position 3: Lenin owned nine Rolls-Royces.: Service, Robert, Lenin (London: Macmillan, 2000)
Page 321, Position 4: According to the International Trade Union Confederation, British workers have fewer rights than Albanians, Russians or Rwandans.: http://www.ituc-csi.org/IMG/pdf/survey_ra_2014_eng_v2.pdfÂ
Page 322, Position 1: The chairman of a company is four times more likely to be a psychopath than the doorman.: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/06/25/how-to-spot-a-sociopath-hint-it-could-be-you.html?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=cheatsheet_morning&cid=newsletter%3Bemail%3Bcheatsheet_morning&utm_term=Cheat%20Sheet
Page 322, Position 2: Members of the Mafia are much less likely to be psychopaths than other Italian criminals.: http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/mafia-members-not-psychopaths/
Page 322, Position 3: Prison inmates in Chile have better mental health than the average American.: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23894415
Page 322, Position 4: There are more libraries in Britain’s prisons than there are in its schools.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24397801
Page 323, Position 1: Keeping a criminal in prison costs £42,000 a year, £8,730 more than the annual school fees at Eton.: http://rethinking.org.uk/facts/rethink/procons.html"http://www.etoncollege.com/currentfees.aspx"http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/jun/30/prison-reform-crime-numbers-ken-clarke
Page 323, Position 2: The annual cost to the UK economy of reoffending by ex-prisoners is equivalent to staging the Olympics every year.: Evening Standard, 14 Mar 2014
Page 323, Position 3: In 19th-century Britain, prisoners were let out for the day if they paid a fee of £5 (equivalent to £300 today).: http://blog.oup.com/2013/11/gentleman-tour-regency-london-prisons
Page 323, Position 4: Australia’s first police force was composed of the best-behaved convicts.: http://www.police.nsw.gov.au/about_us/history
Page 324, Position 1: Before 1902, it was illegal for Australians to swim at the beach during the day.: http://www.australiaonnet.com/sports/swimming/
Page 324, Position 2: In 1907, Australian dancer Victor Goulet had one of his Achilles tendons replaced with a wallaby’s.: http://www.improbable.com/2014/02/22/further-studies-on-wallaby-tendon/
Page 324, Position 3: Crop circles in Australia are caused by frenzied wallabies who get high in the poppy fields used to grow legal opium.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/8118257.stm
Page 324, Position 4: A peppier is a waiter whose sole job is to go round with a pepper grinder.: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Peppier
Page 325, Position 1: 78% of Bulgarians never do any exercise.: The Week, 5 Apr 2014
Page 325, Position 2: The average Internet user goes online 34 times a day.: The Week, 26 Oct 2013
Page 325, Position 3: A group of hackers once took down Papa John’s website because their pizza was late.: http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2012/05/22/hackers-impersonate-web-billing-firms-staff-to-spill-500000-users-passwords-and-credit-cards/
Page 325, Position 4: 90% of Britons eat pizza at least once a week.: http://metro.co.uk/2010/08/09/pizza-beats-curry-to-become-britains-favourite-dish-473685/
Page 326, Position 1: 24% of Britons eat cereal for supper at least once a week.: http://www.businessinsider.com/24-of-foodie-brits-admit-to-eating-cereal-for-dinner-at-least-once-a-week-2013-11
Page 326, Position 2: Until the 1940s, fake snow in the movies was made by painting cornflakes white.: http://life.time.com/culture/its-a-wonderful-life-rare-photos-from-the-set-of-a-holiday-classic/#1
Page 326, Position 3: It’s a Wonderful Life won just one Oscar: for Technical Achievement in developing a new kind of artificial snow.: http://life.time.com/culture/its-a-wonderful-life-rare-photos-from-the-set-of-a-holiday-classic/#1
Page 326, Position 4: Frank Capra had a lucky raven called Jimmy who appeared in all his movies between 1938 and 1946.: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038650/trivia
Page 327, Position 1: The lapwing has more names than any other British bird, including: Pie-wipe, Chewit, Toppyup, Peasiewheep, Tee-ick, Tee-ack, Tee-o, Teewhup, Ticks Nicket, Tieve’s Nacket, Wallock, Wallop, Wallopie Wep, Horneywink, Horny Wick and Hornpie.: Oxford English Dictionary
Page 327, Position 2: ‘At sparrowsfart’ is slang for ‘very early in the morning’.: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=bird&searchmode=none&p=1&allowed_in_frame=0
Page 327, Position 3: The Anna’s hummingbird chirps with its bottom.: http://www.livescience.com/9581-bird-chirps-hind.html
Page 327, Position 4: The scientific name for the milk thistle is Silybum.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silybum
Page 328, Position 1: There is a genus of tiny sea snails called Bittium, and a genus of even tinier ones called Ittibittium.: http://www.marinespecies.org/aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=473020
Page 328, Position 2: The Gelae genus of slime mould beetles includes Gelae baen, Gelae belae, Gelae donut, Gelae fish and Gelae rol.: http://www.curioustaxonomy.net/puns/puns.html
Page 328, Position 3: There are chemicals called arsole, urantae, fucol, dogcollarane, apatite and cummingtonite.: http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/sillymolecules/sillymols.htm
Page 328, Position 4: The largest molecule in nature is chromosome 1. All human beings have two of them, and each contains 10 billion atoms.: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/jan/27/20-human-body-facts-science
Page 329, Position 1: Half of all human beings have mites living in their eyelashes.: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/jan/27/20-human-body-facts-science
Page 329, Position 2: The California mite Paratarsotomus macropalpis can run 300 of its own body lengths per second: 20 times faster than a cheetah.: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140427191124.htm
Page 329, Position 3: A cheetah can go from 0 to 40 mph in three strides.: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/critters/cheetah.html
Page 329, Position 4: Lions can get hairballs the size of footballs.: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/22/tigers-basketballsized-ha_n_3322726.html
Page 330, Position 1: 385 million years ago, fish had fingers.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digit_(anatomy)
Page 330, Position 2: Four million years ago, rats in South America were the size of hippos.: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/17/science/17rat_web.html
Page 330, Position 3: The world’s oldest rose bush is 1,000 years old.: http://blog.countrygardenroses.co.uk/2010/05/19/world%E2%80%99s-oldest-rose/
Page 330, Position 4: Apples, strawberries, plums and almonds are all types of rose.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosaceae
Page 331, Position 1: A whole orange will float on water, but sinks if you peel it.: http://www.sciencekids.co.nz/experiments/orangefloatorsink.html
Page 331, Position 2: All tardigrades live in water but none of them can swim.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2280286/Meet-toughest-animal-planet-The-water-bear-survive-frozen-boiled-float-space-live-200-years.html
Page 331, Position 3: Because the Pacific island of Guam has no sand, all the roads are made of coral.: http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1554196
Page 331, Position 4: Coral reefs make up only 1% of the ocean floor, but are home to 25% of all ocean life.: http://www.noaa.gov/features/economic_0708/coralreefs.html
Page 332, Position 1: 95% of the underwater world is yet to be explored.: http://www.noaa.gov/ocean.html
Page 332, Position 2: If Mount Everest stood on the bottom of the Marianas Trench, there would be over a mile of water between its summit and the surface of the sea.: http://www.deepseachallenge.com/the-expedition/mariana-trench/
Page 332, Position 3: Emperor penguins can dive deeper than the height of the Empire State Building.: The Week 24 Aug 2013
Page 332, Position 4: There is more water in the Earth’s core than in all of its oceans.: http://www.startribune.com/science/253053911.html
Page 333, Position 1: If the Earth had no clouds, the sea would evaporate.: New Scientist 3 Aug 2013
Page 333, Position 2: The floods in Australia in 2010 and 2011 caused the world’s sea levels to drop by seven millimetres.: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-08/24/australia-floods
Page 333, Position 3: If you removed the water from every life form on Earth, it would be enough to cover the Isle of Man to a depth of half a mile.: National Geographic Magazine, Sep 2013 (& elf calculations)
Page 333, Position 4: In the California gold rush, water cost more than gold.: http://www.investinganswers.com/investment-ideas/commodities-precious-metals/50-surprising-facts-you-never-knew-about-gold-1370
Page 334, Position 1: If you hold your breath and put your face in cold water, your heart will immediately slow down by 25%.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammalian_diving_reflex
Page 334, Position 2: Squirting cold water into your left ear will make you feel less optimistic.: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23725596
Page 334, Position 3: You Only Live Once is Katie Price’s fourth autobiography.: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/at-the-tender-age-of-35-katie-price-is-to-release-her-fifth-autobiography-8665426.html
Page 334, Position 4: 40% of humanity live in countries where it’s illegal to be homosexual.: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/16/countries-where-being-gay-is-a-crime?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487
Page 335, Position 1: The age boys reach puberty has dropped by 2½ months every decade since the mid-1700s.: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/magazine/where-have-all-the-sopranos-gone.html?ref=magazine&_r=0
Page 335, Position 2: A bite from a Russell’s pit viper can send the victim back through puberty.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2091250/The-snake-bite-reverse-effects-puberty.html
Page 335, Position 3: Frogs find their way back to their breeding grounds by following the smell of the pond’s algae.: http://www.ipcc.ie/a-to-z-peatlands/frogs/
Page 335, Position 4: Photographs of Algae, published in 1845, was the first book ever to contain photographs.: http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/photographyinbooks/record.asp?RecordID=3048
Page 336, Position 1: Charles Darwin’s last book was called The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms.: Norwich, John Julius, A History of Britain in 100 Places
Page 336, Position 2: 1 in 10 Icelanders will publish a book at some time in their life.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24399599
Page 336, Position 3: It’s illegal in Iceland for parents to threaten children with fictional characters.: http://www.thjodminjasafn.is/english/for-visitors/christmas/the-yule-lads/
Page 336, Position 4: In the French Harry Potter books, Voldemort’s middle name is Elvis.: http://bookshelf.mml.ox.ac.uk/2014/05/14/lord-voldemorts-middle-name/
Page 337, Position 1: Elvis was naturally blond.: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000062/bio
Page 337, Position 2: Blond footballers are 15% more likely to score in penalty shootouts than dark-haired ones.: http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/dirty-tackle/stephen-hawking-produces-detailed-report-to-help-england-s-world-cup-chances-180512048.html
Page 337, Position 3: Dolly Parton once lost a Dolly Parton lookalike competition to a drag artist.: http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/dolly-parton-gay-rumors-losing-drag-queen-alike/story?id=17812138
Page 337, Position 4: A leading comedian in Iran was banned from acting for eight years because he looked too much like the president.: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/5411908/film-star-banned-from-acting-because-he-looks-like-former-president.html
Page 338, Position 1: The president of North Korea is Kim Il-sung, who died in 1994.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_President_of_the_Republic
Page 338, Position 2: Kim Jong-un, Supreme Leader of North Korea, is the world’s youngest head of state.: http://english.cntv.cn/program/newshour/20120718/110122.shtml
Page 338, Position 3: The film of Gone with the Wind is banned in North Korea, but virtually every adult there has read the book.: National Geographic Magazine Oct 2013
Page 338, Position 4: ‘Gangnam Style’ has been watched for four times more hours than it took to build the Great Pyramid.: http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2014/06/daily-chart-1
Page 339, Position 1: Queen Cleopatra lived closer in time to the Moon landings than to the building of the Great Pyramid.: http://sservi.nasa.gov/articles/how-long-ago-was-it/
Page 339, Position 2: The world’s oldest building is a Japanese hut built half a million years before the Great Pyramid.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/662794.stm
Page 339, Position 3: ‘Meh’ is the sound that Japanese sheep make.: http://www.eleceng.adelaide.edu.au/Personal/dabbott/animal.html
Page 339, Position 4: Sheep can see behind themselves without moving their heads.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheep
Page 340, Position 1: Human beings had been keeping sheep for 7,000 years before it occurred to anyone to use their wool.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheep
Page 340, Position 2: One-third of takeaway lamb curries contain meat other than lamb.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-27047970
Page 340, Position 3: The average Briton passes 32 takeaways between home and work.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-26546863
Page 340, Position 4: More people in the world recognise the McDonald’s symbol than the Christian cross.: http://www.businessinsider.com/amazing-facts-mcdonalds-2010-12?op=1
Page 341, Position 1: When the first McDonald’s drive-through in Kuwait opened, the queue was seven miles long.: http://www.mcspotlight.org/company/thisweek/18dec96.html
Page 341, Position 2: Usain Bolt ate 1,000 chicken nuggets during the Beijing Olympics because he didn’t like Chinese food.: http://www.sfgate.com/technology/businessinsider/article/Usain-Bolt-Ate-1-000-McNuggets-At-The-Beijing-4951605.php
Page 341, Position 3: Velociraptors were the size of large chickens.: http://dinosaurs.about.com/od/dinosaurbasics/a/velofacts.htm
Page 341, Position 4: On average Britons will eat 1,126 chickens in their lifetime.: Wonderpedia Magazine, Sep 13
Page 342, Position 1: During its lifetime, the International Space Station will be hit by 100,000 meteoroids.: http://discovermagazine.com/2006/aug/meteors20things
Page 342, Position 2: There are 1,397 known asteroids capable of causing ‘major devastation’ if they hit the Earth.: http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-08/big-pic-all-asteroids-could-potentially-end-world
Page 342, Position 3: The theoretical process of knocking a meteoroid off course with a nuclear explosion is called an ‘X-ray slap’.: http://discovermagazine.com/2006/aug/meteors20things
Page 342, Position 4: In 1958, the US Air Force planned to detonate a nuclear bomb on the Moon to demonstrate US military supremacy.: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2000/may/14/spaceexploration.theobserver
Page 343, Position 1: In 1971, 100 copies of the Bible were taken to the Moon.: http://apostlesofapollo.com/first-lunar-bible/
Page 343, Position 2: The Moon has earthquakes that last for up to 10 minutes. Because it’s so dry and dense, they make it vibrate like a tuning fork.: http://science1.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2006/15mar_moonquakes/
Page 343, Position 3: The dark side of the Moon is turquoise.: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/jan/10/dark-side-moon-turquoise-astronomers
Page 343, Position 4: In China, the Man in the Moon is known as the Toad in the Moon.: http://www.times-standard.com/davestancliff/ci_16673019
Page 344, Position 1: One-third of toads crossing roads are fatally run over.: http://campus.murraystate.edu/academic/faculty/hwhiteman/pdf/consbioljournalvol1-bkobylarz.pdf
Page 344, Position 2: Polar bears cannot be seen by using night-vision equipment.: http://coe.berkeley.edu/engnews/fall02/3S/polarbear.html
Page 344, Position 3: Tortoises can feel it if you touch their shells.: http://www.thetortoiseshop.com/basic-tortoise-anatomy-biology
Page 344, Position 4: Only 1 in 1,000 leatherback turtles survive to adulthood.: http://torontozoo.com/adoptapond/turtle_curriculum/unit5b.pdf
Page 345, Position 1: In 1860, girls in the West reached puberty at 16½. Now they get there before they’re 10.: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/oct/21/puberty-adolescence-childhood-onset
Page 345, Position 2: According to Catholic tradition, the ‘Limbo of the Children’ is a nursery on the edge of Hell for unbaptised infants.: http://www.innvista.com/culture/religion/
Page 345, Position 3: 70% of Americans believe in the existence of the devil.: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=psychological-power-satan
Page 345, Position 4: Finnair operates a daily flight 666 to HEL.: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/flight-666-goes-to-hel-on-friday-13-29576314.html
Page 346, Position 1: Neil Armstrong’s spacesuit was made by a bra manufacturer.: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Neil-Armstrongs-Spacesuit-Was-Made-by-a-Bra-Manufacturer-228875531.html
Page 346, Position 2: Neil Armstrong’s boots are still floating around in space.: http://www.rd.com/slideshows/8-surprising-pieces-of-space-junk/#slideshow=slide3
Page 346, Position 3: Humans spend 13% of their lives not focusing on anything in particular.: http://www.livescience.com/33357-why-we-zone-out.html
Page 346, Position 4: 44% of women prefer reading Fifty Shades of Grey to actually having sex.: Marie Claire, 23 Aug 2013
Page 347, Position 1: Male ladybirds can spend up to four hours mating with a dead female before realising something is wrong.: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg14619714.300-spot-the-ladybird.html
Page 347, Position 2: Ladybird orgasms last for 30 minutes.: http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/yanglu/entry/the_sex_life/
Page 347, Position 3: Smaller animals experience time as passing more slowly.: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347213003060
Page 347, Position 4: ‘Time Person of the Year’ contains the first, second and third most commonly used nouns in English, in order.: Focus Magazine, Oct 2013
Page 348, Position 1: Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, has towns called Intercourse and Paradise. It takes six minutes to get from one to the other.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intercourse,_Pennsylvania
Page 348, Position 2: Michigan has towns called Paradise and Hell that are less than 300 miles apart.: http://www.mapquest.com/maps?1c=paradise&1s=mi&2c=hell&2s=mi
Page 348, Position 3: The world’s most expensive phone number is 666-6666. It was sold in 2006 for £1.5 million.: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/05/23/mobile_number_sold/
Page 348, Position 4: 1 in 6 mobile phones in Britain are contaminated with faecal matter.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-15284501
Page 349, Position 1: The most common bacteria found on banknotes are the ones that cause acne.: http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/04/23/305890574/dirty-money-a-microbial-jungle-thrives-in-your-wallet
Page 349, Position 2: There are more than £100 million worth of 1p coins in circulation in the UK.: http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/04/23/305890574/dirty-money-a-microbial-jungle-thrives-in-your-wallet
Page 349, Position 3: Borrowing £400 from Wonga at its standard rate for seven years would leave you owing more than Britain’s national debt.: http://www.theguardian.com/money/2011/oct/16/wonga-algorithm-lending-debt-data
Page 349, Position 4: In the UK in 2013, more than 4,000 people were buried in paupers’ graves.: http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/Education/article1401784.ece
Page 350, Position 1: Hospital, a village in Ireland, doesn’t have a hospital.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Unusual_place_names
Page 350, Position 2: The IKEA store on Calle Me Falta un Tornillo (‘I’ve Got a Screw Loose Street’) in Valladolid, Spain, is hard to find because people keep stealing the street signs.: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/07/11/ive_got_a_screw_loose_street/
Page 350, Position 3: Spanish police are called smurfs because they wear pale-blue hats.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Smurfs
Page 350, Position 4: Tipping the hat comes from the military salute, which in turn comes from men in armour lifting the visor to show their faces.: http://askandyaboutclothes.com/clothing/style-tips/hat-etiquette/
Page 351, Position 1: The long black ribbon round a funeral director’s top hat is called a weeper.: http://chwolfenbloode.wordpress.com/2009/05/15/guide-to-buying-a-top-hat/
Page 351, Position 2: The Queen Mother once turned up unannounced to watch a top-secret rehearsal of her own funeral.: Private Eye 1367
Page 351, Position 3: The ashes of one in 50 people who are cremated are never collected by relatives.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17300390
Page 351, Position 4: Cremation causes silicone breast implants to explode.: http://www.ienhance.com/articles/breast-implants-when-you-die
Page 352, Position 1: A Spartan only got his name on his tombstone if he died in battle.: Cartledge, P, After Thermopylae
Page 352, Position 2: Vikings who died in bed rather than in battle went to a special afterlife where it was always foggy.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/primaryhistory/vikings/beliefs_and_stories/
Page 352, Position 3: The oldest person in history smoked for 96 years.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment
Page 352, Position 4: One-third of babies born in Britain in 2013 are expected to live for a century.: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/03/26/one-third-of-2012-babies-will-live-to-100_n_1379224.html
Page 353, Position 1: Emperor Hirohito’s final speech to the Japanese nation was the first time his subjects had ever heard his voice.: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/08/the-emperors-speech-67-years-ago-hirohito-transformed-japan-forever/261166/
Page 353, Position 2: Einstein’s last words were spoken in German to a nurse who didn’t speak German and are lost for ever.: http://www.wisegeek.com/what-were-albert-einsteins-final-words.htm
Page 353, Position 3: Bing Crosby’s last words were: ‘That was a great game of golf, fellers.’: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001078/bio
Page 353, Position 4: The last words of John Le Mesurier were: ‘It’s all been rather lovely: http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2012/apr/28/john-le-mesurier